Act for change: Eyemouth high school

Next we hear from Eyemouth High School on how their Act for Change project went.

“Our action is to set up a school composting system to:

1. Reduce the food and other organic waste generated at school going into landfill

2. Transform this waste into compost that we will use on the allotment and, if possible, share with local partners.

To meet these aims:

· 15 students from school (aged from 13 – 17 years), three members of staff and three members of our local community attended a composting workshop delivered by Abundant Borders. This was a brilliant introduction to their composting system and we returned to school to immediately start putting some of our newly learnt principles into practice. In addition, some of the S3 Horticulture students who attended the workshop, presented their learning to the rest of their class (n=20). Not only are we more confident about making our own compost but this has directly impacted on the learning of our senior Horticulture students who are being presented for the SQA NPA Level 4 in Horticultural Composting.

· SBC Community Food Growing suggested that we visited Cockburnspath Community Garden as they have a successful composing scheme and so Rowena Blair, PT Science, and Katherine Lymer, Teacher of Horticulture, visited Neil Simpson, Chair of the Garden, to learn from their experiences. Again, this was a valuable introduction, with the potential of leading to future collaborations. As a starting point, we hope to host Neil (and their community gardener) on our allotment in the near future.

· On Friday 14th March, Katherine will be visiting Coldstream Community Larder to learn about their hot composter. This was another introduction initiated by SBC Community Food Growing following our SBCAN award which, alongside a matched donation from the Rotary (Eyemouth and District) and our own fundraising, means that we are able to buy our own hot composter. The fast composting of biodegradable material will dramatically help address the issue of food waste from our school (n=500 students, ages 11 – 18 years): Currently, one wheelie bin of food waste is disposed of every week and while this is an appalling statistic, itis made worse knowing that it’s all going to landfill. As part of this project, we are working with Senior Leadership in school to reduce the waste and will use the hot composter to convert the rest into compost”

Keep up the fabulous work EHS - thanks so much for your involvement in our act for change project!