Waimakariri District Council

The Waimakariri District Council offers waste minimisation and water management education programmes to schools, preschools and other early education providers throughout our District, facilitated by Enviroschools Canterbury and Eco Educate Ltd.

Some schools and preschools have chosen to join the Enviroschools programme, which is delivered in partnership with Environment Canterbury, and which takes the school - and the wider school community - on a journey to being more sustainable. They develop a vision of where they want to be, and plan a range of programmes and initiatives to get there.

These can include doing waste audits then setting up waste diversion systems, introducing waste-free lunchboxes, and so on; creating compost and using it on their gardens, where they can grow food for the school and even the wider community; installing rain-water capture systems to store water to irrigate their gardens; look at journey planning and seeing if they can cut down on use of cars to get to and from school; planting more native and flowering plants on the school grounds to provide food and shelter for birds, bees, butterflies, and so much more.

All schools and preschools can call on the sustainability education contractor (Eco Educate) as needed to deliver tailored classroom sessions to their pupils, to facilitate a site tour to the Southbrook transfer station and resource recovery park, or to tour one or more of the Council’s wastewater plants, water supply sites or the Northbrook stormwater management area. The messaging of these sessions can be around the waste hierarchy (reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle, recover and residual waste), water conservation, and what not to flush or pour into sewer or stormwater pipes or systems, or a combination of these.

The classroom sessions are tailored to fit the school’s curriculum needs, for example they can cover mathematics (waste audits help with counting, measurement and calculation of ratios), textiles (creating bags out of t-shirts or rag rugs from old clothes, or repurposing soft toys), and persuasive writing (e.g. to ask companies to change their packaging type from an unmarked plastic to a recyclable material).

Eco Educate also provide help to design waste diversion and water capture systems in schools and preschools, and can also assist with finding materials for pupils to repurpose, up-cycle and reuse to build those systems. As an example, recycling crates or baths can be adapted for use as worm-farms, a desk can be turned into a community ‘seed swap station’, and plastic 200 litre drums and PVC piping can be used for rainwater capture and storage systems.

Information about these school education programmes, and advice about reducing waste in schools, can be found on the Council’s website at https://www. waimakariri.govt.nz/services/ recycling-rubbish-and-organics/ reducing-your-waste

The Council also provides additional recycling bins to schools that are located inside our kerbside collection areas, to help divert recyclable materials from their rubbish bins, under the Assisted Recycling Programme for Schools. Application forms are available on request to the Council’s Solid Waste team at solid.waste@wmk.govt.nz