Stratford Primary School Waste Audit

 On Thursday 9th of June, 2016 a group of students from Year 3 to 6 did a waste audit in the SPS hall. All the classes rubbish was collected for one day.

Mr Archer and Nadine who is the waste minimisation officer from the Taranaki regional council helped sort and weigh the food scraps, general waste and recycling.

We found out how much waste we produce in a day. We also found we are still throwing out a lot of glad wrap and chippie packets. Compared to last year it was an enormous improvement. This time last year we were putting out twelve wheelie bins a week and now only two-three wheelie bins a week!

We would like to be the first school in Taranaki to be a zero waste school. To keep this up we need to use reusable containers, buy in bulk and being responsible for our rubbish and take it home.

By Michael Lobb and

Aiden Huttered

CAPOW!

Curious About Processing Organic Waste

At Stratford Primary we have formed a group of Year 3 - 6 students called CAPOW and we are investigating the best way to process organic waste on-site at school.

We want to be a more sustainable school and process our food scraps, weeds, lawn clippings and leaves so we can use the compost to grow healthy trees, vegetables and fruit in our school environment. We will be looking at different systems like worm farms, tumbler compost, bokashi, worm towers and hot and cold composts. One of the things we have learn’t is that the soil is living and it’s so important we look after it so it can grow our food.

Together with our sister school, Matapu, we were successful with our application and have received funds to help us setup and carry out the CAPOW project. The funding is part of Curious Minds Taranaki and Venture Taranaki helps make it happen. We would like to thank them so much for the money and help. We are one of eight community led projects in Taranaki that received funding.

All of us students are really interested in science and technology. We are excited to be working with a scientist Mr Coplestone from Industrial Chemistry Services, who is going to show us how a scientist investigates and works. We are also looking forward to working with CAPOW Matapu and visiting their school environment.

Making harakeke puttiputti with Pare for the school gala day.

Making harakeke puttiputti with Pare for the school gala day.

A handful of SPS Tui’s Enviro students got to have a workshop with Pare on making harakeke flowers.

When making the flowers we learnt lots of skills like patience, Manaakitanga and perseverance. An added extra was that we learnt how the correct way to cut harakeke and prepare it for weaving.

The money we raised from selling the puttiputti is going towards native plants for our fish pond makeover.

We really enjoyed making the harakeke flowers, thank you to Pare for teaching us!

Written by Ella 

SPS Tui’s Enviro Group Welcome Pare Bennett

On Thursday 11^th 2016, Stratford Primary School welcomed Pare Bennett, our new Enviroschools facilitator.  Pare Bennett was called on to our school grounds with a Karanga lead by Jade and supported by Chrissy.

Ella and Masyn took Pare for a tour around our school environment and explained to her about the enviro projects we have been busy working on. Pare was impressed with our gardens, herbs and our magnificent sunflowers. Afterwards we went to the staff room to share some kai.

 The stakes are high as SPS Tui’s enviro group have started the reflection progress working towards Silver Enviroschools status. It was a really enjoyable day and we look forward to Pare’s next visit.

Written by: Toni Cameron and Tarin Nicholas 

Fish Pond Garden Make Over

Finalizing the plan for the fish pond makeover watch this space for more updates.