This year we took on several environmental projects that involved the entire school. Our goal was to become more environmentally friendly and to significantly reduce our ecological footprint. At first, we outlined four objectives that we wanted to meet through our program. These four objectives included an awareness strand, a collaborative strand, a community outreach strand and a strand aiming to implement programs that would reduce our individual and school waste.

We divided all of the projects into two categories. Below is a list of some of the waste reduction and environmental action projects that we did

Jeanne Mance Eco kids show off their litterless lunches!

Waste Reduction:

• Re-usable Dish program
• Ecological Snacks program
• Homemade Snack Bar project
• Ecological Lunch Box contest
• Composting and Vermi-Composting program
• Waste mural
• Research on biodegradable garbage bags

Environment:

Because of the participation by all of the classes in the school, we were able to complete many of these projects and draw up a timeline for multi-year projects. As a result of our activities, our school has become more ecologically-friendly and we actively promote healthier, more environmental lifestyles among both our students and the community. One good example of this is the Ecological Snacks program. Students stopped bringing highly-packaged, processed foods in snacks and lunches.

Also, many of the different grades focused on various aspects of each project. The Grade 2 students worked to clean up and wash dishes for the Re-usable Dish program. Kindergarten students wrote letters to companies like Quaker about their packaging. Grade 6 students worked on doing much of the research necessary for our composting program. Our mayor even got involved by encouraging the use of our composters for the municipality.

Collecting cans for recycling

Our school focused on reducing our ecological footprint dramatically by reducing waste and making environmentally-friendly consumer choices. We also regularly updated our Green Bulletin Board with the latest environmental news to keep staff, students and the community informed. We were able to accomplish all of these projects because of the dedication and excitement that active environmentalism caused in our school. It was because of the great work of our staff, students, and community that we were able to contribute in such a large way both to the lives of our staff and students and to the improvement of our community network.

Daniel Leblanc and Sophie Hovington