St. James is now a certified Gold EcoSchool!

Woohoo! St. James is now a certified GOLD EcoSchool! The certification process recognizes a school for its annual achievement in 4 key areas: energy conservation, waste minimization, ecological literacy and school ground greening. Congratulations to all EcoTeam members, staff and most importantly all of the students! We could not have done this without all your hard work and dedication!

Butterfly release!

Today the grade 1 students released the butterflies that they have been raising. The photo shows one of the many butterflies fluttering in our St. James garden. Let's hope they find it to be a wonderful habitat and stick around! Here is an irish blessing in honour of these beautiful creatures:

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun

and find your shoulder to light on,

To bring you luck, happiness and riches.

Today, tomorrow and beyond.

How does your garden grow?

Thanks to all of EcoTeam members, parent volunteers and teachers efforts, our front garden looks great! Everyone has been busy weeding, planting and watering to make sure that our garden not only looks great but will be a great habitat for the butterflies that our grade 1s have been growing. We are looking forward to their release!

Calling all EcoMembers with a GREEN thumb!

Next week, we will continue continue beautifying our yard by working on our front garden! Don't forget to bring your gardening gloves and keep your fingers crossed for great weather next Tuesday!

Second Waste Audit Results

On April 20th, we conducted our second waste audit of the year. To do this, we collected 24 hours of garbage and recycling and did a visual audit using clear bags and visual estimation. We also weighed the garbage and recorded all of our findings. All together we had 7 bags of garbage with a total mass of 1.7 kg and 3 bags of recycling with a total mass of 9.3 kg.

In February 36.5% of our garbage was actual garbage, in April that number has increased to 84%! In addition, our recycling was 99.1% recyclable paper and plastics! Back in February, each student was generating 7 kg of garbage per year, now, thanks to everyone’s hard work, we are now generating .94 kg per student per year.
That is a 744% improvement! WOW!!!
Congratulations! Together we are making a real difference by reducing our waste!

Happy Earth Week!

Thanks to everyone for all their efforts last Friday as we began our Earth Week Celebration a little bit early by cleaning up the capital. All together we collected 40 bags of garbage and 8 large bags of Organic Waste! Our community looks beautiful!

This Friday is Earth Day. For some ideas on how to celebrate it at home you can visit:

http://www.earthdayottawa.ca/

There are some great activities happening around our city that are free of charge! My personal favourite is free admission to the Museum of Nature in honour of Earth Day, but there are many more suggestions to check out. And remember, everyday is Earth day :)

Cleaning the Capital

This Friday our school will be participating in the city of Ottawa's Spring Cleaning the Capital campaign. Primary students will be working on our school yard while our junior students will be heading out to nearby parks to beautify our community.

Littering is a major environmental concern. It has negative effects on animal habitats, our waterways and it is a fire hazard. It costs lots of money to clean it up and it can make a beautiful place ugly. Let's do our part to make our community litter-free by cleaning up and getting rid of our own garbage properly! Together, we can care for God's creation!