Recipe #6: From Food Scraps to Rockets!
One of the School’s Guiding Principles is to raise social and global awareness. Somewhat unexpectedly, our highly-anticipated lunch program is shaping up to be an enormous opportunity to help make this worthy goal a daily practice for our students.
CDS already has a reputation for involving students in environmental initiatives across the School, and as a result, we have achieved a gold standing for the past several years through the Ontario EcoSchool organization.
We do, however, still produce a significant amount of waste, much of it from the lunches our students carry into school every day. Through education and student participation, we have reduced this volume considerably. But what if we could reduce the waste created at lunch time to zero? As an educator, I believe the prospect of allowing our students to participate in and help coordinate a waste program that reduces our output from lunch to zero waste, to be a tremendous learning opportunity!
Since our students will be eating with reusable service ware, there will be no packaging waste produced. There will, however, be significant food waste. Any edible leftovers will be donated wherever possible to organizations such as Second Harvest. Food waste that cannot be repurposed (even our napkins) will be fed into our new “Rocket Composter” (photo on right), which will transform food scraps into ready-to-use mulch we can use in our own gardens or make available to the CDS community. The food-to-mulch process takes about a week and is an amazing science lesson in and of itself!
From start to finish, I see a tremendous chance for our students to be exposed to and become actively involved in a program that can actually achieve a zero waste goal – a truly experiential and inspirational activity for the students and staff at CDS!
Next week’s recipe will focus on further educational opportunities made available to students in the areas of healthy eating and environmental sustainability.
Land Acknowledgment
The Country Day School wishes to recognize and acknowledge the land on which the school operates. Our nearest Indigenous Nations are now the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the Chippewas of Georgina Island. The Dish with One Spoon Wampum covenant is often cited as an example of the shared responsibility for caring for these lands among the Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples who would call these their traditional territories. CDS respects the relationship with these lands and recognizes that our connection to this land can be strengthened by our continued relationship with all First Nations, by acknowledging our shared responsibility to respect and care for the land and waters for future generations.
School Information
13415 Dufferin Street King, Ontario L7B 1K5
(905) 833-1220
communications@cds.on.ca
admissions@cds.on.ca
Founded in 1972, The Country Day School is a co-educational private school offering programs in JK-12 and located on 100 acres north of Toronto in King.
(905) 833-1220
communications@cds.on.ca
admissions@cds.on.ca
Founded in 1972, The Country Day School is a co-educational private school offering programs in JK-12 and located on 100 acres north of Toronto in King.
