How to build a Worm Farm

Built entirely from reused & recycled materials.
You will require:
Old carpet or sack if available (optional )
Phone books or old bricks
1 piece of corrugated iron - 600mm x 600mm
Small piece of silage wrap or similar
3 car tyres of similar size
Something suitable as a lid
35 Saturday newspapers
1 container such as an old pot or bucket

Instructions for a Worm Farm
1. Soak the newspapers in water and stuff all three tyres full, one sheet at a time
2. Place the corrugated iron on top of the bricks or telephone books, wrap it in silage/ heavy plastic so that the liquid doesn't touch the metal.
3. Put the first stuffed tyre on top of the corrugated iron. Put an old sack or carpet inside to make a sort of nest for the new worms
4. Fill this bottom tyre with bedding material (ie horse manure, rotting peastraw, compost) and then tip the worms in. Cover immediately with a thick layer of wet newspaper. Now put the other two stuffed tyres on top.
5. Feed regularly with kitchen scraps by lifting up the newspaper. Make sure the farm is kept moist to the touch. Always replace the newspaper to keep it dark.
6. Keep the worms and bedding covered with damp newspaper, plus an old sack or carpet (also damp). Place your lid on top of the tyre stack to prevent fly problems.
7. As the tyre stack fills up you can slide out the bottom tyre and empty it of worm castings/ vermicast. The paper in the tyre will probably be full of worms and can be replaced as is, used in your garden or compost heap or given to friends to start new Worm Farms.
8. The empty tyre is now ready for reuse - stuff with fresh, moist newspapers and place on TOP of the tyre stack.
9. Regularly empty the pot of worm rum - dilute 8-1 with water and spray or pour on to and around your special plants.
10. The nutrients from your kitchen scraps are now available for you to use in your organic garden and your worm population will have increased remarkably.
11. Worms suitable for worm farming can be found in animal manure or rotting pea straw.

How to have rubbish free School

Firstly, everyone needs to know about rubbish. Carmel Collage could organise a presentation at assembly, have posters around the school or just put it in the notices. We want to reduce, re-use and recycle to minimise the waste going to landfills, where it can continue to pollute the environment for hundreds of years.

You also need to talk to your Board of Trustees and educate and inspire them about Zero Waste for your school. A target of "Zero Waste" should be included in the school’s policy document by the Board of Trustees. This will ensure that everyone knows the School’s direction and goal is Zero Waste and makes it official for teachers and students to work towards Zero Waste as a school policy.

After lunch the school could then do a waste audit ( collect up all the rubbish) and have a close look to see what we are throwing out. Recording these will help to track improvements in your school’s waste reduction programme and determine future plans.For information on how to carry out a waste audit, go to waste audit manel.Your school needs to develop a ‘green’ purchasing policy for school equipment and canteen goods. You want to be sure that what comes onto the school grounds and into the tuck shop is as environmentally friendly as possible.
For example, can you persuade your tuckshop to always use paper bags, and maybe biodegradeable spoons, forks and plates such as the Potatopak range of starch products. Does your school recycle its printer cartridges, and do they recycle computer paper in the office ? how much rubbish is thrown away?
For more information go to Buy it Back Guide.
Re-Use it if possible !
We need to encourage Carmel Collage to adopt a policy on reusing paper, cardboard and other packaging before recycling.

Recycling !
We could use shredded paper is as a bedding for pets, by asking the local pet store and supply them with shredded paper for the rabbits and guinea pigs etc.
We already seperate our paper from our plastics but can go to http://www.reducerubbish.govt.nz/ for more information.

Now for Organics - Composting and Worm farms !
Organic matter is animal or vegetable matter than can be broken down by bacteria, fungi, and other micro-organisms. These are the things such as food scraps , that you can put in a compost bin or worm farm.
Carmel Collage can easily have compost bins somewhere in our school for these food scraps.
Another great use for your shredded paper is as a bedding for pets.
Does your school use incineration or bury waste ?

They will benefit your school environment and your school community, and they will have positive effects on the wider environment too.

At Carmel collage we believe in values such as Justice, care for the poor and vulnerable, service, compassion and repsect for human dignity. we need to become more environmently friendly

Rubbish

Our Planet is amazing and beautiful

but we are destroying it

When walking around our Carmel Collage, it is obvious that we have a problem

A rubbish problem

Covering our pathways and fields the litter lies, waiting to be pickin up by people otherwise they get eaten by poor, innocent birds. Carmel Collage is full with wildlife, going from geese to fish to seagulls and we need to not only protect them, but protect ourselves.


Currently 65% of our rubbish could be recycled or composted instead of rotting away in a landfills which can take decades to decay and is rather like sweeping dust under a carpet, hoping it doesn’t come back to haunt us!

Its as simple as not being lazy, being able to walk a few steps and put your rubbish in the bin.

There are bins located all over our school,
The tuck shop
The art block
The MJ block
The top courts
By the japenese room,
And in most classrooms

There is no escuss to litter so why do it?

The Shocking facts

Rubbish is a growing issue in NZ for a number of reasons

Firstly, were running out of places to put it.

Every year, the rubbish we created would fill the Westpac Staduim, twice over
Currently, all that rubbish gets buried in landfills, but even now we don't have enough of them. Finding suitable locations for new ones in future will be hard, and no-one wants to have one next door.

Secondly it takes centuries to break down
It takes hundred of years to break down plastic, steel, aluminium and even paper once in a landfill. Garden waste and kitchen scraps break down into methane, a flammable greenhouse gas. Green waste also combines with water to form a poison called leachate that can contaminate groundwater. Leachate has to be collected and treated which is very expensive.
The problem won't go away
We can't keep burying rubbish and just hoping the problem will go away. It won't. Reducing, recycling, reusing and composting are the keys, and the more you do, the bigger the difference you can make.

The rubbish problem
In the year July 2001 - June 2002, 909,500 tonnes of waste was disposed (mainly to landfills) within the Auckland region.
This rubbish is made up of domestic rubbish, commercial/business waste, special waste (mainly treated hazardous wastes) and some waste trucked in from outside the region. This does not include waste which goes to cleanfills, or is recycled, or dealt with in other ways.
Where does all this rubbish go?
Non recyclable household waste collected at the gate goes straight to landfill.
Landfills in the Auckland region are:
Claris Landfill, Great Barrier Island
Greenmount Landfill, East Tamaki
Redvale Landfill, North Shore
Whitford Landfill, Manukau.
Why does waste matter?
Wasting resources is bad business. It costs you money and it costs the environment.
Are New Zealanders efficient and thrifty?
No!

Approximately 93 percent of the materials we use never end up in saleable products at all but are discarded during the production process.

Approximately 80 percent of what we produce is discarded after a single use.
For example Aucklanders are producing three times the amount of rubbish per person than we did 20 years ago.

New Zealand's waste problem is large and growing.

Nationally we dispose of 3.4 million tonnes of rubbish into landfills per year.

Around 282 thousand tonnes of hazardous waste is put into landfill each year.

Why aren't landfills a good way of dealing with our rubbish?
Burning rubbish isn't a solution - it pollutes the air and may release toxic substances. Composting and recycling are healthier option for everyone.

While landfills effectively contain our rubbish, did you know that:
rubbish doesn't break down very well in a landfill. Plastic, steel, aluminium and even paper and cardboard take tens or hundreds of years to break down. This is because the oxygen isnt easily accessed, which helps break down substance

While modern landfills don't tend to cause dust or odour problems, nobody wants to live near one
and for good reason

As garden rubbish and kitchen scraps break down in a landfill they produce methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas (20 times worse than carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas) and can reach explosive concentrations in enclosed spaces such as basements.

Rubbish bins are singing for food

So why cant you feed them?

Save our planet for a better tomorrow

Litter is dangerous!

Litter is dangerous!

It morning tea and you chuck the core remains of a apple on the ground thinking it doesnt mater but it does!

People may slip on them and could even break an arm because of your harmful mistake.

Plastic bags can easily blow onto Shakespeare road, causing accidents.

Birds wander our school, picking up anything left behind. They dont know what plastic is, they dont know that glass is sharp or that plastic bags will sofficated them. It is our responiablity to protect them.