A Fabulous Meeting with Riverside PS

Justin's Wormfarm
Justin gave a report about his wormfarm. Justin's mother had problems setting up the wormfarm. Justin helped his Mum. They have already got one bottle of worm juice. Justin will sell it at the Doing More With Less stall at  the Royal Show.  Ingrid is running the Landcare Pavilion and will showcase the project at the Royal Show. Ingrid will give free tickets to Justin so he can get into the Royal Show. The money raised from selling worm wee will go to Millennium Kids. Justin had a chat with is mother and decided to get food scraps from other neighbours. Justin gave them instructions - no citrus, no onions in scraps. People are leaving scraps for Justin. Going so well needs more worms so Justin negotiated with neighbours to give the extra food waste to their chickens.

Waste Audit
The team collected 7 bins from all around the school. They tipped  the waste onto a  big tarp. Separated into three types - plastic - recycling and food waste. Used gloves. They weighed the food waste. Approx 10.6kg of food waste going into the bin each day. Students are throwing away all their sandwiches and the team noticed whole fruit was not being eaten. Greater amount of plastic. The main plastics were  gladwrap, yoghurt sandwich bags and juice boxes and lost of Tetra Paks.

The Chicken Project 
The Chicken Team decided the best way to reduce the food waste was to put in a chicken coop. The girls did a presentation that discussed opportunities, challenges and who would look after them during the holidays.

Cat sent an email with lots of questions:

• What other food will chickens need?
• How will you collect scraps?
• How will we change the behaviour of people doing the wrong thing?
• What other schools have chicken coops?

Skype with Cr Rhys Williams

The students talked to Cr Rhys Williams, City of Mandurah via skype. He was really keen to hear the kids ideas and suggested they come to Council to present ideas. The questions the kids put to Cr Williams were:

• Do you think we could have a recycling plant in WA? 
• Why do we send our recycling over East? 
• Why is it not illegal to put a recycling sign on a product when you cant recycle it. 

Mr Elwood from Cleanaway
Myah asked her Dad to come to the meeting. He works for Cleanaway. At home Mr Elwood teaches his kids about recycling. He thinks education is the key. He really liked the chicken project idea. He said waste going into the ground created problems. He really liked that chickens would reduce the amount of food going into landfill. He was sad to see birds on the landfill. He said there was no control system to keep birds out. He talked about birds that came to the tip - some even come from overseas. There are no predators there to scare them off.

Riverside Team skype Cr Rhys Williams and talk about waste strategies