WAO events – free for students

The Reset Summit 2020 is a six day annual event held in the Southern Lakes District. Its aim is to educate, inspire and enable our transition as a community and nation to a healthy, thriving, diverse, carbon zero community.  

All events are FREE for students, thanks to Kahu Youth sponsorship.

Of particular interest:

The Story of Plastic on Wednesday 28th October 2020, 6.30pm – 9pm

Urban foraging workshop – find edible plants in a local park Sunday 1st November (morning)

And of course the Well-being RESET fair where Team Green will have a stall.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

Abraham Lincoln

Tree planting season

We have received 56 trees to plant on our school grounds, thanks to our recycling efforts via the Paper4Trees scheme and our local sponsor Ziptrek.

Ready to be planted!

The planting will happen during whanau in the morning, the last week of the term as follow:

• Tuesday 22nd September Iron
• Wednesday 23 Sept Pisa
• Thursday 24 Sept Roy
• Friday 25 Barker

On that day, we invite all the whanaus of that house to meet at the circled area to get tools, instructions and a tree.

Beyond Team Green

Great recycling culture in our school!

Here is a sign by art students to signal the recycling area and a poem by our college caretaker. Wonderful!

There was a recycling area and near it a wall
People walked past, not interested at all
One day someone thought they could change all that 
He knew a good teacher and they had a chat 
A board was sourced and designs were abound 
The next stage took place and some students were found 
They toiled and painted and made a design
Now it sits on the wall in the golden sunshine
As for the wall, people still just walk past 
But now they see art and they say “That’s a blast”

Beeswax food wraps workshops

From our drain cleaning project, we have found substantial amounts of litter and waste in our school drains which has been an eye opening and shocking discovery.

From this, we have taken the initiative of reducing litter in the school. We have thus negotiated a Canteen deal to reduce single use cup. Then, where we are running a series of lunchtime workshops for students and teachers at school.

These workshops teach you how to make your own reusable, sustainable beeswax wraps (Wastebuster’s Instructions) which can then be taken home and used in your lunch box all for free.

We had our first workshop with the year 13’s which was a huge success and we plan on running workshops on the two following Monday lunches. It would be awesome to see as many of you there as using beeswax wraps not only reduces the waste around our school but also minimizes our environmental footprint.

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Thank you to:

• Wastebusters for providing fabric, all the necessary tools, knowledge
• Food tech department for allowing us to use the space
• Adam Horan and Pete Rutherford for gifting beeswax
• And Team Green students of course for contributing, donating, cutting, writing and doing! Great work!

 

Canteen Deal

MAC canteen offers 50c off when you bring your own cup in the morning with your order for:

• hot chocolate
• hot chips
• indian dahl

It doesn’t apply to other canteen goodies that do not require containers eg. pizzas, brownies etc.

We thank the canteen ladies who accepted to implement this deal and also manage all the cups for us!

By reducing packaging in the first place, we reduce litter, so it doesn’t go in the drains which reduce planet pollution.

Team Green at the Waste Free Fair during Plastic Free July

On Saturday 18th of July, Team Green members Hazel, Chloe, Lucia and her sister Cora, Lena, Lulu and I went to the Waste Free Fair at the Wanaka Center and hosted a stall. 

At the Fair you can buy zero -waste products and learn a lot about living a waste free life. 

We sold homemade cards and feather earrings made out of recycled inner bike tubes.
Lucia sold beeswax wraps and hand sewn bags.
Hazel was also holding a stall and was selling bath bombs and cards.
Lena helped out around our three different stalls.
Our stalls were a great success! 

There were many stands and people, and we had a great time visiting all the different eco-friendly stalls.

There was chopping boards and cutlery made from wood, jewelry, hand sewn gloves and hats, soap, food, and so much more.

The surprising profit we all earned is being donated to a variation of helpful organisations such as WWF, Te Kakano and Dunedin Wildlife Hospital.

We nearly sold everything, and we even got an order to make a pair of earrings!!

Well done Team Green!

JOIN PLASTIC FREE JULY

Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps millions of people around the world be a part of the solution to plastic pollution. From taking part in this, we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Will you be a part of Plastic Free July by choosing to refuse single use plastics?

Join us and take the pledge at https://www.plasticfreejuly.org

Mount Aspiring College Team Green has pledged to…

 

• Buy from bulk bins

• Take reusable bags for produce

• Use beeswax wraps or reusable containers

• Homemade baking 

• Be aware of what we buy

• Use eco friendly

• Do homebaking  

• BYO cups 

• Opt for metal and glass rather that plastic

• Use shampoo and conditioner bars to reduce waste

• Take your own container when buying meat

 

The team will be attending Wastebusters and Plastic Free Wanaka’s Waste Free fair.

Held at the Lake Wanaka Centre, from 1pm – 4pm on Sunday July 14. Free entry 

From Term 3, the canteen will be offering a 50 cts discount when you bring your own cup. 

We have also been working on a drain project, unclogging the school drains. From the first drain we worked on we found 167 pieces of rubbish with things including wrappers, chewing gum, squashed cans, straws and even scissors. 

Hence the campaign to reduce packaging to start with… We can make a difference!

Why are we passionate about drains?

Watch and share our video showing why and how we clean drains and the difference it makes.

Cleaning drains

Over the last couple of weeks, Team Green has been cleaning out the drains in the North Block of our school. 

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The amount of rubbish we found in the drains was frankly disgraceful. In just one drain we found 167 pieces of rubbish, some of which could be reused.  For instance, we found two scissors and two spoons, both in good condition. 

Pretty messed up!

Rubbish from ONE drain!

Our school community needs to reduce our waste. 

In order to protect our waterways, we placed two layers of mesh netting in the drains. This will prevent the rubbish from getting caught in our drains and creating more environmental damage. 

Our school’s goal should be to reduce the amount of rubbish we produce. We can substitute our single-use plastic for more environmentally friendly options. As you can see in the picture above, several plastic straws and plastic packaging are displayed. Alternatively, we can replace these things with reusable items such as metal straws, beeswax wraps and keep cups to make our school grounds more environmentally friendly. 

Each individual can make changes to create a greener future. Every small change makes a big difference: replacing plastic bags with reusable ones, recycling what can be recycled, picking up litter, etc…

Litter harvested on our school grounds in just ONE day!!

OUR SCHOOL NEEDS TO CHANGE!

Recycling and Trees

Mount Aspiring College has participated in the Paper4Trees Scheme since 2008. Each year, we record the amount of paper and cardboard we recycle and earn trees from it. These trees are planted on the college ground in school-wide tree planting events.

In 2019, Wastebusters collected a total of 51 cardboard fadges and 97 wheelie bins full of paper. This earns us 28 trees. The previous year, we earnt 33 trees and we didn’t get them so we can now have 61 trees to plant. That’s enough to organise a school wide planting event with one tree per whanau (56).

A nice project for Team Green.