Creative eco-solutions in the Junior School

Bianca and Ava interview the Junior School’s Eco-Committee, discussing what they have done to improve the school environment and what they would like to do in the future

On Friday morning last week, we met with Emma, a lovely girl in Year 2, hearing all about her work for sustainable break times. Emma told us that she carries a bucket to collect fruit peel every break. Collecting leftover fruit waste is important, as it is stored in the compost bins for later use to assist growth for the plants around school. She puts one bucket in the playground by Hastings and another in the main Junior playground. We saw Junior girls throwing their peel in and Emma diligently looking over the buckets to ensure they were being used well.

However, despite this tactic working extremely well for the young years, the older members of the Junior School, as well as the Senior School, do not bring in fruit. They would rather bring crisps and other snacks covered in plastic, which then sometimes litters the playground. To prevent this, Emma believes that removing the ability to buy popcorn and crisps from the canteen at break would be beneficial. She expressed a concern that “the bags aren’t even full anyway” and was upset at the amount of packaging involved in snacking.

Emma is an example of seeing a problem with something like food waste and coming up with ideas to combat it. She enthusiastically told us that “there are people who always swing on the trees so I thought maybe I should put up a sign”. We saw some of this tree-swinging in progress and agreed with her. It was so inspiring to see her respond to what was going on around her with solutions immediately. Solving environmental problems doesn’t have to entail a big master plan. Something as small as a few buckets can make a big difference over time!