Last week the Raglan Area School grounds were buzzing with the building of a CarbonCycle compost system. Many hands came together to create the giant boxes that will enable all food scraps to be transformed into quality compost by the school, at school, for school projects like vege gardens and tree growing.
This project has been brewing for a while. Xtreme Zero Waste secured funding from Trust Waikato to purchase the 4 box Carbon Cycle set and Liz Stanway, XZW and Steve Woodcock, RAS caretaker have been collaborating with Carbon Cycle company experts Tim Bowater and Richard Wallis to get the boxes installed at school. The Carbon Cycle Company work across Aotearoa enabling communities to embrace the art of community scale composting. Tim and Richard came to guide the installation alongside Liz and Raglan Area staff and students. Paul Murray of Para Kore has also been working closely with Raglan Area School on waste education and was there to join the building and record the day.
The spring sun was shining all morning, and the day began with guests being welcomed followed by a ceremony lead by Sean Ellison to dedicate and bless the school’s new maara harakeke. Next came the building of the kit set compost boxes by students , tools were assembled, groups created for the students involved in the build and the construction ran smoothly. Once the metal frame was created, mulch made from the school grounds maintenance was added to the base to allow for air flow. Wooden planks were then shared with group and Tim invited everyone to plant a thought or seed of intention as all the planks were slid into place to create the four compost boxes. The new composting equipment was blessed by Tawera Riki. After a delicious lunch provided by RAS, students and helpers loaded the first mix of compost using food scraps, mulch and lawn clippings from school. A huge thanks to all the hands involved in building this project from the ground, and especially to the staff and students for your ongoing work keeping food scraps out of landfill.
In addition to being an Envioschool, Raglan Area School is one of the10 schools in the Waikato Region chosen to be involved in the Oranga Kura programme delivered by Para Kore (and funded by WDC). This involves the school committing to reduce their waste to landfill, and specifically schools reducing their food scraps to less than 5% of their current amount to landfill by June 30th 2025. This will be relatively easy target for RAS who have been collecting most of their food scraps to feed local chooks or pigs. Whilst this has been a great solution to share the nutrients locally, the new compost system now enables the school take further steps of being kaitiaki of our environment. The new Carbon Cycle compost boxes will enable RAS to compost all their food scraps at school as well as learn the skills required to create quality compost that will be used to grow trees for restoration work in the Kaitoke Reserve and in school vegetable gardens.
