Bees Wax Wraps

EnvironAgents Update: Following a waste audit the enviro agents determined that rubbish from our lunches was a huge issue. We investigated alternatives and the children decided that bee wax lunch wraps would be a great substitute for our school. We are fortunate that from donations of beeswax and fabric from our school community we will be able to provide each child and teacher in our school with a free wrap! In the coming our children will be making a beeswax lunch wrap These will be used instead of plastic food wrap in their lunch boxes, it’s great for wrapping sandwiches, cheese, veggies, fruit, crackers, etc. They can also use it to cover food in their fridge, or when taking a plate somewhere. Our enviro-agents hope to reduce the amount of plastic food wrap used by our school community which ultimately ends up in landfill or our waterways and oceans. Here are some other benefits: · Reusable food wrap is a more sustainable option, preventing toxic plastics from having to be produced. · It can be washed and reused many times, creating less waste. · It’s healthier for you to wrap your food in this beeswax fabric rather than having plastic wrapped around your food. · You’ll save money if you use reusable food wrap instead of purchasing commercial food wrap. · Less rubbish around the school grounds. A huge thank you to all of our volunteers who are helping run this initiative. We hope to gain a lot for this project.

Treemendous Makeover

Opening of the Sensory Garden from Kathryn Robertson on Vimeo.

TREEMENDOUS MAKE OVER/ ECO BUZZ ARTICLE

The following article was release the the latest edition of the ECO BUZZ environment magazine. 

Nelson Central School wins Treemendous garden makeover!

Nelson Central School has just heard that they have won a Treemendous garden makeover worth $10,000, which they will use to create a native sensory garden early next year! Treemendous School Makeovers, a joint initiative between the Mazda Foundation and Project Crimson, teaches children about the importance of caring for the environment through the development of outdoor classrooms  http://treemendous.org.nz/.

What helped them win the makeover was the huge efforts made this year by the school’s envirogroup and teacher Lynley Walters.  They have been working hard to create natural habitats within the school with the desire to bring more wildlife to the grounds.

The Enviro agents have also been involved in many other projects throughout the year and being a newly formed Enviroschool they decided they needed to reduce the waste at the school so the envirogroup conducted a whole-school waste audit, with the help of the facilitators from Enviroschools and Nelson Environment Centre’s Waste Education Services (WES), both programmes funded by the council.

After the waste audit, the students got really busy making an action plan. They decided to convert the lunchtime food scraps they generate daily into rich compost, but first they needed to design and build large compost bins and of course a veggie garden! They called in the WES facilitator to show them how to build healthy compost, and got going.

A lovely parent Joe Hay built three large wooden compost bins from materials donated by Placemakers Nelson, and with funding from the council, the school bought food scrap bins, sack barrows, garden tools, and a 4 layer worm farm that they will get up and running early next year.

The students are currently planning the movies they are going to be making to educate the rest of the school about the new composting and the paper recycling systems. Hopefully these movies will be complete by week 8 and they will get a couple of weeks composting underway before the end of the year.

Waste!

Last Wednesday Sarah from the Environment Centre came to Central School to help us with an action plan to follow our waste audit.

During her visit we were able to determine where we needed to start on our waste management journey. We have really seen how much work is involved for us to get where we want to be. We have many great ideas and have now put some plans in place and have already actioned some of these.

We have written letters to the appropriate people asking for permission to put in our compost bins and garden boxes and have also made some applications for funding. We have also put notices in the school newsletter asking for donations of man power and wooden pallets for the construction.

We are really excited about the next steps in our project!  If you feel like you can help us in anyway we would love to hear from you.

Enviroagents@nelsoncentral.school.nz

Stream Restoration on Alton Street

During the last week of term 2 Nelson Central School walked down to the stream on Alton Street and Manuku Street to plant trees on the side of the stream. The trees were donated by Nelmac and Liz Gavin designed the area map and suggested what type of trees we should plant. By planting all of the trees we are helping the stream and all the living things that live in the stream. Thanks for everything you done.

From Jordan, Arlo, Eli, Lennox, Tessa and the Enviro Agents            

Before Picture:

After picture- Wait till these plants get established! They will look great.

Tree Planting for Wildlife Habitats in Schools

As you know over the past few weeks we have been working towards creating cleaner better habitats for our native wild life at NCS. We were donated some plants and have been planting different shrubs and grasses. These are all parts of the NCS vision for the future. We hope to bring back all sorts of animals such as birds , geckos , skinks, insects and butterfly’s to our school grounds.

Thank you for participating  in these events and we hope we will do lots more in the future.

Thanks again

Chloe, Lucy, Niamh, Tessa, Astrid and Sylvie

Enviro agents for NCS.