Today I had the pleasure of going on a day trip with our “Office Hippie”, Lisa McGuiness. We visited two schools in the area, Beith Primary and Gateside Primary School taking with us a flat packed compost bin to build with the school kids upon arrival. The idea behind bringing the compost bins to the school was for the kids to calculate carbon emissions that would be saved by composting food and keeping it out of a landfill. Having a composting bin in on school grounds means that excess food can be recycled into compost and then used for growing whatever is desired in the school ground, an excellent form of recycling and reducing waste!
We went up to the primary school and Lisa explained to the children and their teachers a bit about the composting bin, shortly after I gave the kids a quick explanation of how to assemble the compost bin (it was actually quite simple and fun to make) they quickly started putting it together. After we had finished putting it together we all went back inside to do a word search themed around composting which was a fun group activity and also let the kids know what kind of things they can compost in their brand new compost bin. After the word search Lisa informed every one of all the things that can go inside the compost bin and explained how long it takes to make compost and what the benefits are of composting your leftover food.
It was great to see such a positive response from all the kids and they all were genuinely interested in the positive effects that this would have on the environment. If children this young can understand and appreciate the benefits of recycling methods like this then maybe we can all be a bit more environmentally conscience, after all we are all children of this Earth and it’s the only one we’ve got!
