By St. Brendan Eco Team
The St. Brendan’s Eco Team is on a mission to make the world a better place. We are a Gold Status Eco School because of the many initiatives that our Eco Team has led.
Last year, we began boomerang lunches every day to make our parent community aware of the amount of garbage that one lunch can produce, and to encourage the use of reusable containers. We try to minimize our carbon footprint by implementing lights out lunches and we give out a monthly award to the class that creates the least amount of waste and makes the most effort to help the environment.
We also have three sweater days each year where we turn down the heat 2 degrees and encourage sweater-themed civvies days. The money raised from these days allowed our team to purchase hostas for our kindergarten yard and perennials for our front garden. Our team worked together to weed, till and plant these areas in our school last spring.
We have partnered with various organizations to help divert waste from our landfills. We collect used markers and recycle them through the Crayola recycling program.
We are currently collecting used clothing and soft toys for the Bag2school program. This program will pay us for the materials we collect and they will reuse them to make new items. Principal Arlene Martin said the school would be happy to receive community donations of used clothing and stuffed toys between January 6 to 13, Monday to Friday, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
We will also be selling Simple Ecology mesh produce bags in January to reduce the plastic bags in our landfills and spread the word to “know thy impact” on the environment. Funds raised from this sale will be used to beautify our school garden.
Our Eco Team is made up of many students from Grade 4-8 and is led by three teachers. We meet weekly and are constantly striving to better our world.
St. Brendan Catholic School is located at 186 Centennial Rd.