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Honor from SBS is back with their amazing growing project. Check out their calendar for any events near you and remember to pop into their branches to pick up your free seeds and be entered into their prize draw......

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I've been thinking about the sponsorship of education quite a lot recently. I've been directed towards Purebreads. They make bread...as well as a few other things. They also give free seeds to schools and encourage their customers to return their non recyclable granola bags to be reused as potting bags for Trees for Survival projects.

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✓ Vegan, Gluten Free & Organic ✓ Light & fluffy, High energy ✓ PALEO friendly Free after $35 spent Offer ends 14th May Tangy flavoured Light textured Moist Packed full of dates Great with a cup of tea Organic Spelt Flour Natural Culture & Sea Salt Sunflower Oil Yeast Organic Honey

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Ontario in Canada is having a waste free lunch week promotion in their schools. There are heaps of resources avilable on their website to download for free. Should we have our own waste free lunch week here in Otago or just stick to everyday being a waste free lunch day? I'd love to hear your opinion......

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Since 2010 Ontario schools have prevented more than 100,000 kilograms (220,000 lbs.) of food and packaging from entering disposal through the Waste-Free Lunch Challenge. The average Waste-Free Lunch Challenge student is able to reduce their waste from 33 grams to just 21 grams per day.

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Everyone always loves making a worm farm in a milk bottle. The Compost unit from Zero Waste Education is avialable to all year 5/6 students in the Queenstown Lakes District. Get in touch with Simon if you think it's time he visited your school to deliver it

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Wilding pines are a big problem in our district. Lumsden Primary School have made this amazing movie about what the problem really is!!!! If you want to take some local action to help this problem get in touch with the Wakatipu Wilding Conifer Group, the have loads of action days ---> http://www.wakatipuwilding.co.nz

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Runner-up in the Year 1-8 category in Environment Southland's Green Screen Environmental Short Film awards 2012. This film cleverly and humorously details the problem of wilding pines in the Lumsden area, from how and why they arrived, and why they are a problem to today's efforts to remove them and stop them spreading.

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The North East of England does it again....their council is encouraging wild flowers to grow instead of groomed ornamentals.....a haven for wildlife and insects....as well as costing much much less to look after and still looking amazing

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Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

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I've done a lot of water investigations with schools this year. This article is an awesome representation of how much water we have on Planet Earth.....Perfect for use in your classroom

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One of the most boggling experiences I have is standing on a beach staring at the ocean. It's just a silly amount of water. And then there's all this water underground, and more in the atmosphere, and there are lakes and rivers and streams and marshes and swamps and snow and glaciers and ponds and puddles.

So I've been thinking about all this water and how I don't really have a handle on how much of it there really is. It's clear what needs to happen-

I need to cube it.

I need to put all the world's water in cubes so I can look at it all at once and grasp how much there really is. It's only fair.

Let's start by examining where all the Earth's water is-

Okay so almost all of the Earth's water-over 97%-is sitting there in the oceans. This isn't hugely surprising, but what did interest me is that of the 3% of all the water that's fresh water, only .3% (or 3/1000ths) of that is the kind of fresh water we know well-lakes, rivers, and other surface water that humans and most other animals drink. The rest of the fresh water-99.7% of it-is icecaps and glaciers, underground water, and water floating in the atmosphere. In fact, all the lakes in the world amount to only about 1/250th of the amount of water in glaciers and icecaps.

So anyway, if you took all of that water and put it into a huge cube, how big would the cube be?

Below, see the Earth with the water in all the normal places, and then we'll strip all the water and put it into a cube on top of the US.

There you have it. All the water underground, on the surface, and in the atmosphere amounts to about 332 million cubic miles. That makes a cube with a side of 693 miles, whose base stretches from Indianapolis to Denver. It doesn't feel like you could even fill the Pacific with the water in that cube, let alone everything else. So I guess the big takeaway here is that the Earth's oceans are nothing more than a thin film on the surface of the Earth, relatively speaking.

And how big would a cube of just the fresh water be? It would have sides 202 miles long and sit nicely on top of Iowa.

And the drinkable water cube? Its sides would be 29 miles long and it would fit into Rhode Island.

It blew my mind that all the world's lakes and rivers would fit into that cube. And that's the drinking water that all animals have to share.

Within this cube of drinking water, you could cut out a smaller cube (8 mile sides) that contains all the rivers, streams, and brooks on Earth-the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Nile and all the rest-and another (6.5 mile sides) that contains all water inside of all of Earth's living things. These would sit comfortably on top of Queens and Brooklyn.

Just for fun, let's put each of the Great Lakes in cubes. Each cube is next to its own lake:

And let's look at the oceans individually. We'll throw in the tiny Mediterranean cube too:

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Putting All the World's Water into a Big Cube - Wait But Why

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One of the most boggling experiences I have is standing on a beach staring at the ocean. It's just a silly amount of water. And then there's all this water underground, and more in the atmosphere, and there are lakes and rivers and streams and marshes and swamps and snow and glaciers and ponds and puddles.

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With summer only around the corner, why not have a look at this sunflower shade house. This would make such an amazing addition to your primary school or early childhood centres outdoors space. Fun for students to make and then enjoy the ever changing shade as it grows....It would provide great inspiration for a more permananet one made from Willow

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It's time to think of summer planting. This odd shaped garden doesn't look like much right now but with a couple packets of sunflowers it will be an oasis. A sunflower "house" is the perfect respite from the summer heat and the perfect place to perch little ones for lunch in the shade. Our summer sunflower houses have taken several forms as you will see below.
We began with a very basic version that only requires two packets of sunflower seeds of various heights, a sunny spot, and water. The kids love to pitch in and can really be involved from the start. The first decision is what shape your house will take, we chose a horse shoe, but a rectangle or square will work just as well. Don't forget to leave a grassy opening for your door. It's easy to dig the proper depth trenches along your shape and then have your kiddos drop the seeds spacing them according to the directions. If they need help measuring the spacing, cut a length of cardboard the proper length so they can use it as a guide.

Sunflowers grow pretty fast and with a bit of tending they will quickly show kids reward for their labor.

Soon enough they will be perching under the broad leaves. Blankets, babies, bears will join the party and all will enjoy. Maybe a mom or two as well ;)

The perfect place for a shady summer nap =)

For the past six summers we have had various versions of a sunflower "house" in our back yard. Our latest version has included a more sophisticated entrance. We arched chicken wire over the opening with PVC pipe. This allowed us to plant sugar snap peas making an edible canopy. We even planted cherry tomatoes in front of the arch so the tender fruits can be plucked and enjoyed at whim.

This year we plan to do all of the above but also add morning glory amongst the sunflower seeds. The floral vine should grow up with the sunflower stems and when the stems get to a reasonable height we will string twine back and forth at the top across the semi circle between the yellow blooms......rumor has it that the morning glory vine will grow across the twine making an amazing floral ceiling. I'm looking forward to pulling out the sun hats, gardening supplies and purchasing seeds......oh yeah, can't wait for those fresh faced toothy smiles too!

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It's time to think of summer planting. This odd shaped garden doesn't look like much right now but with a couple packets of sunflowers it will be an oasis. A sunflower "house" is the perfect respite from the summer heat and the perfect place to perch little ones for lunch in the shade.

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One student from CPIT has been busy creating an epic anti bottled water campaign as part of his studies. I'm a sucker for great photographs being used to drive positive change.

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Student movement to ban the bottle - Ara

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He set about researching deeper into the plastic bottle issue and the facts he uncovered say it all: According to The New Zealand Herald, we spent $60.4 million on bottled water in 2012; 70 per cent of these bottles won't be recycled; and here in Christchurch our water is equal with that from Evian in France, the very company which we purchase so much of our bottled water from.

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We all know that organic waste and landfills contribute towards climate change.....however.....when was the last time you saw some real figures to use in the classroom???? The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation have written a report.....

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The FAO estimates the direct cost to producers of food that goes to waste is currently US $750 billion annually, a figure that excludes wasted fish and seafood.

But the FAO says the waste not only causes huge economic losses but is also doing very significant damage to natural resources - climate, water, land and biodiversity.

It says its report, Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources, is the first study to analyse the impacts of global food waste from an environmental perspective.

The authors say: "Without accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from land use change, the carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated at 3.3 Gigatonnes [billion tonnes] of CO2 equivalent: as such, food wastage ranks as the third top emitter after the USA and China.

"Globally, the blue water footprint (i.e., the consumption of surface and groundwater resources) of food wastage is about 250 cubic kilometres, which is equivalent to the annual water discharge of the Volga river [in Russia], or three times the volume of [Switzerland's] Lake Geneva.

"Finally, produced but uneaten food vainly occupies almost 1.4 billion hectares of land; this represents close to 30% of the world's agricultural land area."

"We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day," said the FAO's director-general, José Graziano da Silva.

The FAO has also published a comprehensive tool-kit as a companion to the study; it contains recommendations on how to reduce food loss and waste along the food chain, and details projects around the world that are seeking to tackle the problem.

The FAO and the UN Environment Programme are founding partners of the Think Eat Save - Reduce Your Foodprint campaign, which was launched earlier this year and which aims to help to co-ordinate worldwide efforts to cut wastage.

The study says54% of global food wastage occurs during production, post-harvest handling and storage, and 46% at the processing, distribution and consumption stages.

As a general trend, developing countries suffer more food losses during the production stages, while food waste at the retail and consumer level tends to be higher in middle and high-income regions.

The report says that the later a food product is lost along the chain, the greater the environmental consequences, since the environmental costs incurred during processing, transport, storage and cooking must be added to the initial production costs.

Meat productionhas a substantial impact on the environment in terms of land occupation and carbon footprint, especially in high-income countries and in Latin America, which together account for 80% of all meat wastage. Apart from Latin America, it is high-income regions which are responsible for about 67% of all wasted meat.

Fruit wastage contributes significantly to water waste in Asia, Latin America, and Europe, and large volumes of vegetable wastage in industrialised parts of Asia and Europe mean a large carbon footprint for the sector.

Wastage of cereals is a significant problem in Asia, affecting carbon emissions as well as water and land use. Rice is a particular problem: paddy fields account for around 20% of human-related emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and a significant amount of rice is wasted.

Uneaten food that ends up rotting in landfills is also a large producer of methane, although there is another use to be made of it which can offer worthwhile returns. A British company is among those who are profiting by exploiting them.

Thanks for reading to the end of this story!

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The FAO estimates the direct cost to producers of food that goes to waste is currently US $750 billion annually, a figure that excludes wasted fish and seafood. But the FAO says the waste not only causes huge economic losses but is also doing very significant damage to natural resources - climate, water, land and biodiversity.

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Room 5 from Tomarata School in New Zealand give their views on this years Unpackit Packaging Awards finalists.....Awesome job Room 5......

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Room 5 presents some of the products up for best and worst packaging in the 2013 Unpackit Awards.

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The rap way.....

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SIGN THE PETITION HERE: http://www.endecocide.eu Music video for the Gangsta Rap Tune Eradicating Ecocide by J1P For the charity Eradicating Ecocide and the ECI Campaign.