Being environmentally friendly isn’t always easy and for Christie Kean, a member of the Waste Wise council and 6 students this was proved correct as they sorted rubbish into separate bins for the waste audit on Thursday.
This was held underneath the library to see if our school is using the classroom landfill bins correctly. They did this by collecting one days’ worth of rubbish from landfill bins in C and D block classrooms. They then sorted the rubbish into sections to find the amount of waste.
The total waste collected was 9.83kg and only 1.65kg of this should have been in the landfill bins. So a staggering 8.18kg of the other rubbish could have gone to food or recycling bins.
It was a big learning curve where the students realised that we aren’t being as careful as we should, and that we need to take into consideration which bins we are putting our rubbish into.
It not only affects the environment but it also puts a lot of work onto our caretakers’ shoulders, who have to sort through everything, whereas we could have made their job easier by making the right choices.
The 6 students who helped out got to experience what it’s like to sort through the bins and it became clear to them that some aspects weren’t very pleasant with all the waste that it contained. But overall it was a great initiative to be involved with and a positive was that they were able to find out what Sancta Maria College needs to do to move forward and become more environmentally aware.
Shontelle Matano
