The ridan composter
A Greener Barclay
Barclay Primary has been hard at work becoming a more environmentally friendly and greener school.
Through Eco Schools we have gained our Bronze and Silver Awards and are now working to achieve the prestigious Green Flag Award.
A key task has been composting the kitchen waste produced by the school. Our wonderful kitchen staff are involved in the composting cycle by separating the food waste from any plastic wrapping or metal.
We also have two fantastic and highly committed Year 5 pupils that come daily to process the compost. They not only collect the kitchen’s food waste but also go to staff rooms collecting any used tea bags or food.
We are aiming to extend our composting by working with the schools MDA’s on separating all left over foods from packed lunches.
We will then confidently be composting all of the school’s waste.
The whole process takes no more than 5 minutes and can produce large amounts of compost.
Taking our food waste, the composter produces constant amounts of rich compost which is used in areas of the school for growing plants and seeds.
With redevelopment of our playgrounds taking place, we will very soon be growing our own vegetables too. This was a hugely exciting environmental step forward for our school.
Before we got our Ridan Composter we had been concerned by how much adult and pupil time it would take to use and if there would be nasty smells.
We needn’t have worried because it takes very little time and there are absolutely no smells other than the country smell of freshly produced compost. The countryside comes to Leyton!
The girls have been busy potting plants and children have been planting seeds throughout the school in order to make our school environment more green and give the children greater ownership of their environment. We have used all of our own compost and have been talking to the children about how it is made and where it comes from.
We have been taking our green footprints out into the community by inviting other local schools to see how we compost and share ideas of how to develop our schools to become more environmentally friendly. We will be keeping in touch and aim to organise events in the future where the children can all come together and share their green ideas. We intend that visits will be arranged to other schools and networks will be made.
Our Year 5 pupils have been developing designs for our garden area. An environmental team have come in and been working with the children developing garden designs, thinking about how the area can be maintained and how to do it by remaining within cost. Terrific life skills being learnt!
