Zero Waste

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Be a Zero! Be a Hero! Join the Race – to Zero Waste!

That’s the slogan that defines our project on zero waste. Being a zero CAN make you a hero and here’s the story of how we tried our best to be zeroes and heroes.

This project all started with a lot of hope and commitment. Our vice principal Mr. Fernandes came into the Gr. 7 classes of Mrs. Manchisi and Mr. Intraligi and started showing us what was in our garbage. Our first reaction was “Gross” Then he said, “Guess who put all this stuff in there?” We still thought gross, but then we started to realize that this was OUR problem. Before you knew it, we were writing letters to businesses about their packaging, politicians about what we wanted and media groups to ask them to cover our issue.

We started focusing on people who are trying to make change and came across one couple whose number one achievement is to have zero waste. Sarah McGaughey and her husband Kyle Glover might pull it off . We were so fascinated that we went shopping with Sarah to see what kinds of things she buys and where. From there we went to our school board’s head office and presented our ideas to some important people who then helped us arrange an environmental conference for schools in our board. Cool! Finally, came our big event where we taught the students in our school about all we had learned through an entertaining play called What a lot of Garbage and some environmental quiz show stations.

On the day of our event (April 20), we were able to get CTV out to cover our story and then Mr. Fernandes and I did a live interview on air with CBC radio. That was neat. Mr. Fernandes wanted us to raise even more public awareness so he sent out another media release and that got us some interest from Salt and Light t.v. (they did a documentary on us that will air on June 8).

Finally, on May 4, we did our final performance and had MPP Peter Tabuns in attendance. A small group of us met with him after and told him the three things we’d like government to work towards: 1. An environmental tax on poorly packaged products. If the packaging is going in the garbage then the company should have to pay for it. 2. A move towards refillable milk bottles. Harmony milk is doing this right now. 3. Start charging people a $1.00 for plastic bags since we use 8 million plastic bags a day in Canada. We know we can only achieve success when everyone gets on board so we really hope you DO.

This project was a wonderful idea. It has a very powerful message : the earth is sacred. We only have one of it and that we should all try to keep this earth healthy by doing things like reducing, reusing, and recycling. It all starts with the power of one.

So please go check out our website at

www.tcdsb.org/environment/zerowaste/

And remember being a zero DOES make you a hero.

Angela Alimi (Gr. 7 student) and Roy Fernandes – Vice Principal St. Stephen