The compost bins are open at Hope School, ready for the community to bring in food scraps and turn them into nutrition for the garden instead of heading to landfill.
Brand-new, rodent-proof compost bins have been erected at the school with the help of a waste project grant from the Tasman District Council, adding to the expanding environmental and horticulture projects in the school grounds. It follows the school’s involvement in Garden to Table, which is driven by a charitable trust that encourages learning outside the classroom and into the garden.
The school has a developing vegetable garden underway and also a native plant nursery, and the council’s Enviroschools facilitator, Prashanti Lovegrove, says the school has been proactive in seeking help to achieve its garden goals and shows what can be achieved by a small school.
“It’s about opening the doors to the community and being willing to work with agencies that can offer expertise. I think the students absolutely love it.”
Hope follows several other schools in Tasman to receive a waste project grant for the lidded bins, which are wood within aluminium frames and have a metal grill on the bottom.
“The school reached out to the community to ask if it was willing to participate in the project and there was quite a bit of interest. If you aren’t putting food scraps in a compost bin at home because of meat, then it can come here.”
Families are also being offered bokashi inoculation to assist pre-fermentation of food scraps as Prashanti says that helps to reduce odour if families are stockpiling food scraps before taking them to school.
She says the Garden to Table initiative is still in a development phase in Nelson Tasman and the plan is to increase participation in schools.
