Sarah Langi visits Birchwood School to talk about waste!

Today we were visited by Sarah Langi who came to talk to us about waste - OUR waste! She showed us the rubbish which Birchwood School students had produced in just one day. This is what it looked like ...

There was all sorts in the pile - paper, cardboard, plastics and food waste. Some of the food "waste" included untouched fruit, sandwiches and yoghurt. There were even a few socks... What expensive rubbish!

The biggest problem is the amount of plastic, including lots of gladwrap ("sad"wrap!) and wrappers, which our children are bringing to school. This waste cannot be recycled and is going straight to landfill. 

Mrs Langhi's challenge to us all is to prepare and pack lunches which are free of any waste materials which cannot be recycled or composted (i.e. no plastics). We can do this by buying in bulk and using washable containers or lunchboxes with compartments, and we can avoid buying individually wrapped food portions. One of our Room 5 children even suggested that we could get busy in our kitchens and make and bake our own treats, to avoid buying processed biscuits, bars and snacks which are cellophane packed. Great idea! We are all busy people, so we may need to stock our tins, boxes and freezers full at the weekend to last us through the week ... Then, hopefully, our waste-free lunch boxes will look like this ...

And our waste-free valleys will look like this ... 

This will be our focus over the coming weeks as we get stuck into our sustainability unit :) !!!