THUNDER BAY - Students and staff at Kingsway Park Public School are going back to the tap, one of the many things they hope will reduce waste at their school.
EcoSuperior and Kingsway Park kicked off the start of Waste Reduction Week on Monday with a commitment to reduce waste at the school and in the home.
“We’ve created a number of different projects here that are student created projects, which is the best way to get students involved, to have them create the projects and initiate them,” said Darren Lentz, principal at Kingsway Park School. “The students are really an integral part of getting them to initiate things that they want to see in their community and they’ve come up with some great ideas. We run with their great ideas.”
One of the ideas brought forward by students at Kingsway was providing reusable water bottles to students. On Monday, all students were given a reusable bottle with the school’s logo.
Grade 7 students, Norma Liscomb and Seth McLuckie, gave a presentation on water conservation to get everyone thinking about just how much water is wasted every day.
“If everyone drank a water bottle for one year, it could circle the globe twice,” McLuckie said. “If you recycle, you can put it back to being used again so you don’t have to use more. Or you can use less water.”
“Water conversation is important so we don’t run out of water or hurt what water we have left,” Liscomb added. “Take shorter showers or get a filter for your water so you don’t have to drink as many water bottles.”
Kingsway Park has made a commitment to become an official EcoSchool. Students have already taken on other initiatives to become more eco-friendly, such as the gardening club’s water tower garden and the bee and butterfly garden, which received a Beautification Award from the city of Thunder Bay and the Horticultural Society.
“One of the best ways to get kids to appreciate the environment is to get them outdoors and build a relationship between them and the environment so they learn to love it and care for it,” Lentz said.
According to Lentz, more and more students are taking the message of waste reduction seriously, but a lot of work still needs to be done inside the school and at home.
“We really need to think of initiatives like reusable things,” he said. “I like the purpose of rethinking things first. That to me is a really important piece. We had the three R’s, it’s expanded to six, and the first one is rethink. We need to, as a society of schools, the city, rethink how we are using and interacting with our environment because we need it to survive.”
Lentz added that reaching out to students is a step towards making real change, because students are the best ambassadors when it comes to conservation and waste reduction.
“We start with them and educate them and through their research and inquiry, they find out all their information that’s needed to take back home to their parents and present that message to their parents that we need to start thinking about the environment in a different way and some of the real things that we can do as a school, as a household, as a community to help that process,” he said.
Waste Reduction week is held across Canada from Oct. 12-23. EcoSuperior and community partners will be hosting several events throughout the week including contests, the Great Pumpkin Compost Collection, solid waste and recycling facility tours, and school presentations.
For more information, visit EcoSuperior.org.
