This year UNESCO is fortunate to be partnering with Learning for a Sustainable Future. With this partnership, each UNESCO school was given a $200.00 grant to create a program that helps support climate change action. Onanole’s UNESCO group identified the school recycling program a
s an area we could improve in. By reducing what we send to landfills we are helping to reduce emissions. The students in the UNESCO group spent a week surveying all the trash cans in the school to identify what we are discarding the most of. They found paper towels to be the most discarded item but unfortunately, that is something we cannot change at this time. The next most discarded items seemed to be plastic bags and plastic wrapping. Through Terracycle, we were able to use some of the grant to purchase a special recycling box that will allow these items to be recycled. We also noticed there is a lot of food waste in the trash cans, so the remainder of the grant was used to purchase a few buckets. Now instead of sending the food waste to the dump, it will be going to some very lucky pigs near Sandy Lake. We also are now separating out batteries, markers, pens, and mechanical pencils for other recycling programs. Cedar, Haven, Jayden, and Meadow created posters and a presentation which they led in each classroom to help inform the entire school about what can be recycled and where to put it. It is our eventual goal to take the data we record each week to the school board in hopes of getting Terracycle boxes for each school in the division.
