Chillin' with organics.
Grade 10 St. Mark’s Catholic high school students Tom Allard and Pat Ryder take out 10 green bins as part of the school’s pilot project in Manotick, which allows the school to take part in the city’s residential green bin program.
Emma Jackson
When Holy
Family Catholic
School received three new
green bins last week, it marked the 40th school to participate in the city’s
organic waste program that’s usually reserved for residential units only.
These 40 schools have come forward on an individual basis,
either from parental pressure or to meet a goal such as becoming a certified
Ontario EcoSchool, a program run out of Toronto that helps schools reduce waste
and energy use. But River Ward councillor and environment committee chairwoman
Maria McRae said she’s tired of this “one-off, piecemeal approach” and is
taking the program a step further this week, by formally inviting all four
school boards in Ottawa
to take part in the program.
“There are huge benefits to this. You take organic waste out
of the garbage where it shouldn’t be going, and you also have a generation of
people who you want to influence at an early age that they are the stewards of
our planet going forward,” McRae said, adding that the 30,000 tonne organic
waste shortfall at the Orgaworld composting facility would be offset by adding
so many schools to the pickup routes.
St. Marks Catholic high school in Manotick is one of the 40
schools already signed up with green bins, and now puts 10 bins to the curb
every second Friday, including four brimming containers from the cafeteria.
After months of consultation with several city departments, the
long-awaited bins were in place by mid-October. And at the end of the semester,
teacher Nancy-Anne Giroux said the program is making a difference in how
students see waste.
“At the beginning we had to put a lot of announcements on,
and my (Grade 11 environment) students went around to classes and taught them
what can go in the bin,” Giroux explained. “Now it’s going really well.”
Various classes are responsible for taking an inventory of
bin waste, putting the bins on the curb for pickup, bringing them back in, and
washing them out.
Grade 10 science students Tom Allard and Pat Ryder were
responsible for putting out the bins on the morning of Jan. 21, and the
students were supportive of the project.
“Schools are a good way to start with keeping that stuff out
of landfills, to keep all the garbage down,” Ryder said. Allard added that it
only takes a few seconds to make the choice between putting food waste in the
garbage or the green bin.
“Instead of just wasting the food you can use it as
fertilizer, so you may as well throw it out in the green bin instead of in the
garbage,” he said.
Giroux said the pilot project is important to teach students
about the waste they create on a daily basis.
“I think its super educational, because these kids are our
future, and it’s a good thing to lessen what’s going in the landfill,’ she
said.
Holy
Family Catholic
School near Hunt Club and
McCarthy roads is also part of the city’s pilot project, and just received its
green bins last week, according to Grade 4 teacher Valerie Nixon.
“So far it’s great – you can put so much in them,” she said.
“We could never recycle things like Kleenex and brown paper towels, so now all
of that can go in the green bin.”
The school is attempting to become a certified Ontario
EcoSchool. The program aims to teach students to be ecologically aware, and
certifies schools on a bronze, silver and gold basis based on reductions in
energy and waste.
Steve
MacLean Public
School in Riverside South is also working towards
an EcoSchool certification, and is concentrating on the bronze level for its
first year.
“We’re very good at doing recycling and making our students
aware of energy conservation, so a big thing for us is to have more regular
checks of those things to make sure they continue,” said Daniel MacDonald, a
learning support teacher at the school and leader of the green team. “That’s
also a good way to get students involved, they can go around and make sure
computers are turned off and that things are being recycled properly.”
He said they hope to work up from there, eventually bringing
in a green bin program and reaching for silver and gold standings.