Reuse, Compost and Enviroschools Action Projects in Makarora

It had been a little while since I'd been to see Makarora Primary School and there were lots of things I wanted to do with them, so in the spirit of keeping traveling down I booked two whole days with them to deliver the Zero Waste Education Reuse and Compost modules in the mornings and the afternoons were spent on Enviroschools action project planning.

I've delivered the Reuse module a few times now so that was pretty laid back, no surprises there. However, it was the first time I've delivered the compost module, so in my usual fashion was a little nervous about delivering it for the first time. All was fine. The children were awesome and as I expected from children at a rural school it wasn't the first time they'd heard about compost.

We made some awesome piggy banks and desk tidies and the mini composts in the milk bottles were awesome. I can't wait to hear if the worms get to work and break down all the compostable material we put in there.

With the mornings taken care of we spent the afternoons working on some ideas for future action projects. The school is really embracing being part of Enviroschools. Lynley is using the kit and EfS to help structure next years curriculum. A large part of this is to involve the community of Makarora in the work that goes on at school.

We all sat down and discussed the different ideas that the children would like to see happen at school. This ranged from bike tracks to eadible gardens. After we had identified each of the projects that we'd like to start we considered the costs, ease of implementation, who could help us and who else it would benefit. The children now have a fair bit of work to do in passing this information onto their community and getting feedback on what they would like to be done.

It was so good to them all getting so enthused by the idea of being able to take action themselves to help enhance their school environment, not only for themselves but for their community. Keep a look out on here for news of projects developing. They will also be starting a blog soon to showcase what they are up to, there will be a link on here of course.