Sustainable living at an eco-friendly school live-in experience

Student life can be a bit boring at times. As the English saying goes ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!’, and it is how routine feels like sometimes. However, at St Edward’s College, our teachers like to spice things up for us. In fact, every year they organise a special Live-In experience at school.

The Live-Ins are an opportunity for us to spend time together with our friends, attend normal lessons during the day but spend the afternoon living at school and doing various fun team-building activities.

During these Live-Ins many resources are used. Our school has its own kitchen staff and during our Live-In we not only eat here but we also shower and sleep in appropriate dormitories. This year, the EkoSkola Committee at St Edward’s College is participating in the YRE - Litter Less Campaign. Our aim is promote a life-style in which we try to take into consideration the environment.

We worked closely with the Live-In coordinators to make our experience more ‘EcoFriendly’. We achieved this by instilling five main principles which were: 1. Washing our dishes 2. Having five-minute showers 3. Not using plastic items 4. Recycling of waste produced and lastly, 5. We gave the leftover food to the animals.

The Eco-Friendly Live-In took place between 7 and 9 March as a trial; however it was such a success that the school will be implementing it for all future Live-Ins.

The children’s response was one of enthusiasm and Boomerangs showcasing us washing the dishes received a lot of likes. Parents also commended positively on the initiative. The No. 1 thing we stressed on the students, which went well was the cleaning of the dishes. The students found it both entertaining and it gave them a sense of responsibility.

To wash the dishes, we filled up two containers with five litres of water each. One had soap, the other clear water for rinsing. During each meal only 10 litres of water were used to wash around 20 place settings. A normal dishwasher has the capacity to wash up to around 12-16 place settings not including cups. Thus we would have needed two washes and each consumes around 11 litres of water per wash. Washing plates under a running water wastes five times more than a dishwasher does according to www.dishwashers.reviewed.com . Filling up containers is an alternative to filling up the sink due to restricted space in the kitchen. Everyone washed his own dish and cutlery in a line and it was quite efficient.

According to the website Home-WaterWorks, an average American uses around 65.1 litres of water and showers for around 8 minutes. The average shower head uses 11.5 litres per minute. Thus with 5 minute showers students only consumed around 55 litres of water.

The Eko-Skola Committee also helped the kitchen staff with the recycling process. Any food wrappers and containers were properly separated and cleaned (if needed). We also noted that our kitchen staff tries to use local produce and prefer to use products that have less packing. This highlights the importance of sustainable consumerism.

Any organic food left overs such as fruit and vegetable peels were also composted in our special composting bin which we keep in the school garden right in front of the kitchen. On the other hand, food that was left uneaten on our plates was not simply thrown away. Rather, it was collected and donated to people who feed stray animals. Many students were happy that even though they were full and could not eat anymore, their food was not wasted.

One of the Eko-Skola Committee students and a Year 7 student, Luke Yeomans, commented that the school should make put more emphasis on sustainable living and that students were able to learn first-hand about how their daily routine at home can help the environment.

Our teacher and one of the Eko-Skola Link Teachers, Ms. Samantha Abela commented how “such Eco-Friendly Live-Ins not only make the experience at school more enriching but we are also helping the planet and Malta be a better place. Every small step counts”.

This Eco-Friendly Live-In experience was part of the YRE-Litter Less Campaign that the Eko-Skola Committee is implementing. It also just one of the activities in the campaign at St Edward’s which included a Clean-Up in the Cottonera area as well as the installation of a Recycling System in the classes.

In our opinion the students did a great job during the Live-In. We believe that with simple measures such as the ones taken, all Live-Ins in the future at our school can be made ‘Eco-Friendly’. This is just another step towards making our school and environment cleaner and more sustainable. The authors are Year 7 students at St Edward’s College, Vittoriosa