Eco Warriors

On Friday 27 October, the Eco Warriors, together with Room 6, conducted a waste audit on our school's rubbish output, for one single day. To say it was smelly and gross is an understatement! But as scientists, we gloved up and needed to dig in and get the data.

We were astounded at the amount of food waste that was thrown away. Compostable food waste came to nearly 14kg! Our next big waste was paper at just over 14kg. Being a school, this might be understandable, but it is something we can work on. We weren't happy with the amount of "all other waste" category which goes straight to landfill and came in at 10.18kg! These are things like broken containers contaminated with food scraps, noodle containers, "recyclable" coffee cups, stationery etc.

We learned to rinse off food waste so that items can be recycled and that all compostable coffee cups are not recyclable in NZ, nor are the milk cartons and straws - they go straight to landfill. 

We now have the data and can put some plans in place to reduce our waste by 40% by early next year.