Sciennes Recycling Food Waste Pilot

Thank you to Anita Sharkey, Waste Education Officer for City of Edinburgh Council, who came to talk to the Eco Committee on Friday 29th November and was keen to find out about our Food Waste pilot.

Tackling food waste

An exciting new recycling scheme is being piloted in four Edinburgh schools. Food waste is to be collected and recycled to help reach the Scottish Government’s environmental targets. The trial will to help find out how much food waste there is in our schools. Sciennes and Pentlans Primaries have been chosen as sites for the pilot.

If successful, food waste recycling will be rolled out across the city. Vice-Convenor of Transport and Environment Councillor Jim Orr supports the scheme. He said:

In order to meet our targets of recycling at least 50 per cent of our rubbish we all have to make more of an effort. Collecting leftover food from schools will send a fantastic message to pupils – the future generation of recyclers.

The collected food will be recycled by anaerobic digestion at Scottish Water’s Deerdykes facility. As well as reducing landfill waste this type of recycling can turn waste food in to a fertiliser or a fuel-source.

http://edinburghbrightfutures.com/2013/10/11/round-up-friday-11-october-2013/

Autumn clean up

Thank you to the Sciennes families who stayed back a wee while after school yesterday to support our Clean Up campaign.

Children from P1 to P7 enthusiastically wielded litter pickers and bin bags supplied by the Council and Keeping Scotland Beautiful.

With the help of their parents, Mrs Nowell and Mrs Mackay, we completely filled one of the big school bins with what we found in just half an hour!

It has been found that where litter is already present in an area people are more likely to drop their litter. Hopefully, just by making the Sciennes area cleaner, we will deter people from dropping litter in future.

Energy watchdogs

Sciennes’ new energy watchdogs are taking the lead in improving our school’s impact on the environment.

 

Starting during Switch off fortnight, our watchdogs are encourage staff and pupils to make simple energy savings by: turning off lights and electrical equipment when they are not needed, and heating classrooms sensibly by adjusting radiators rather than opening windows.

Each year at Sciennes, we use a substantial amount of oil, gas and electricity to heat our school and pool, and light our classrooms.

Our energy watchdogs are hoping to reduce our carbon footprint, and the school’s bills, throughout the year by taking these simple steps. We are also working closely with experts at the City Council to try out other energy saving measures before they are rolled out to other City schools next year.

    Mr Kearton and some members of the Eco Committee

Keeping Sciennes Beautiful

Our eco-committee is enthusiastically supporting Edinburgh's Clean Up day of action on 29 November, and invites all children from P1 to P7 to bring a parent or carer along and take part!

Litter can be a problem in our school grounds. A constant frustration for our many ecologically-minded children is that a good deal of the litter we collect seems to blow into our playground from the surrounding streets.

To help tackle this, we will meet at school on Friday 29th November at 12.20pm to collect litter from our nearby streets and green spaces.

You are welcome join us and to stay for as long or as short as you wish. However, we ask that all children be accompanied and supervised by a responsible adult.

If you have a litter picker at home, and suitable gloves, please bring them along!