Zero waste lunch boxes

In line with our ‘Quality improvement plan’ we are trying to become a more sustainable centre. We have thought long and hard about what little things we can change in our day to day lives to help the environment.

A huge interest for the children in the Moane Room is the garbage man and what happens to our rubbish after he takes it. We have had discussions about how there is way too much rubbish in our landfills and what we can do to help reduce that. Following that interest, last month Karina collected the children’s lunch time food wrappers. 

Karina weighed the bag of wrappers/plastic items and it weights a huge 952 grams!!!We multiplied that figure by the number of weeks in a year; we as the Moane room have 49.5 kg of wrappers/rubbish every year! To put that in perspective we could the fill ¾ of our Moane bathroom in a year. 

At the end of last month we trialled zero wastage lunch box. It was great to see parents get so involved and the children taking control of what goes into their lunches. After that week trial we have decided put this into our Quality Improvement Plan and embed it across the centre. The reusable containers are excellent and will also save money in the long run by buying things in bulk and not individual packets. As this is a big ask and will make packing children’s lunch box a bit trickier at times, we appreciate the flexibility of the parents at Newcastle West’s in this change. 

We hope that everyone can get on board with this and help steer our planet in the right direction. We can’t wait to get feedback over the next month! 

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Karina Burgess Image
Karina Burgess

Karina is an Early Childhood Educator at St Nicholas Early Education in Newcastle West. 

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