As we enter into a new year, our Junior Eco-Committee is embarking upon an exciting project. Our eco-committee consists of eight students from Year 3-Year 6: Aoife, Arianna, Emily, Gracie, Keona, Margeaux, Mariead and Millie who are all engaged young people, excited and passionate about making our school more sustainable. 

Our eco-committee was elected in September 2023, following an impressive application process: they had to write a letter of application, provide a presentation to their class on their suitability for the role, and then there was a vote. Every fortnight the team meets to share ideas they have to make our school community more sustainable and to discuss environmental issues they have been learning about in their free time.

Their project for this term is to keep a wormery in our St. John’s House gardens. Every day our students will collect all compostable leftovers from lunchtime and add this to our wormery: turning kitchen waste into nutrient-rich compost which we will later use in our gardens to grow herbs, vegetables and other plants. 

The overall mission of our committee is to reduce food waste. As a committee we have met with our catering team to discuss ideas on how to tackle this issue. Accordingly, we have decided to measure the production and plate food waste. 

Our brilliant catering team will weigh all food waste at the end of lunchtime serving, and will record their measures on a large display, visible to all students as they exit the dining hall. We hope that this will encourage students to be more mindful of what they choose for their lunch (to avoid choosing things they might leave). Similarly, it will also be used to inform our catering team as to what they select for our lunchtime menu. 

We are thoroughly excited for the months ahead to see the progression of our wormery and to make sure our worms thrive in their new environment. We will provide updates with how our wormery is developing, and the statistics for our food waste project!

Mrs S Rowbotham 

Year 4 Teacher and Eco-Committee Lead