Kidsfirst Hokitika kaiako, Annette Copping, recently composed this letter for the Green Column in the local newspaper, the Hokitika Guardian. Annette shared the steps that tamariki at Kidsfirst Hokitika are taking to make sustainable changes with their kai, and sharing this with the community.
How many readers eat a packed lunch away from home during the week?
Over the past three years, Kidsfirst Kindergartens Hokitika have been reducing the amount of waste we produce and dispose of. One of the changes for sustainability we are promoting is the use of Zero Waste lunchboxes.
Each day, every child brings a lunchbox to Kindergarten. Our lunchbox promotions to our parents encourage food packaged using plastic lidded containers, kai carriers, and beeswax wraps, all of which can be reused again and again. All of which are also available from various outlets in Hokitika town.
Fruit and veges have their own compostable wrapping which we recycle through our Bakashi bucket to Papatūānuku – the Earth Mother – via compost and directly into the earth, who we are learning to look after for a clean green future.
Some food scraps go to the worm farm to make new soil, however sometimes there is rubbish waste to send home.
Yes, at Kindy we do not want to have the rubbish waste to dispose of, however, if we are not disposing of rubbish at Kindy, then someone is – the rubbish still goes to the same landfill from the home! Landfills, that are somewhere near you!
Our tamariki are making changes for a sustainable future through a daily routine of less waste or better still, zero waste.
We have started with the lunchbox to bring about awareness. Let us continue to provide ways to our children to be sustainable through our modelling, our consideration to packaging, and our kiwi can-do attitude to find ways to enhance our sustainable practices.
Have you checked your lunchbox lately?!
Here are Ivy Day (left) and Edie Ellis (Right) enjoying their morning kai.
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