By Jessica Micallef
Sunbury Primary School pupils are doing their bit for the environment.
School volunteer De’arne Houston said a Gardening Australia segment inspired them to start their War on Waste Wednesday program – a food scrap and soft plastic collection service.
“We needed to get some more scraps to make compost for our kitchen [garden] and it was just a perfect opportunity to get scraps in our school community so that we can make more compost,” she said.
Families are given a bucket to fill up with food scraps. They then drop off their full bucket for the “garden warriors” to sort through.
“It’s a swap-and-go-system,” Ms Houston said.
“Really good scraps will go to the chooks and then the next scraps go to our worms and then all the mushy yucky stuff goes into our composting system.”
Since the initiative started a month ago, the school believes it has diverted more than 100 kilograms of waste from landfill.
Ms Houston said the children had embraced the initiative with open arms.
“For the first week we only had a handful of scraps handed in and then it’s doubled every week from that,” she said.
Families can also drop off soft plastics to the school’s War on Waste collection point.
“It is a way to create a conversation at home about food waste.”
