A ‘Greener’ MBTS

Recycling at MBTS

Montessori By The Sea will be collecting aluminum cans to be recycled.  Please bring all your empty, washed aluminum cans to the school and put them in the recycling bin located outside the pathway leading to the back of the school.

The cans will be collected and bailed by the Department of Environmental Health (DEH), who then ship them to a recycling facility in the US. The aluminum will then be sold for re-recycling.

Please tell your neighbors and friends they are welcome to do this… the more we recycle, the less that will go into the landfill!

Aluminum recycling is the process by which scrap aluminum can be reused in products after its initial production. The process involves simply re-melting the metal, which is far less expensive and energy intensive than creating new aluminum. Recycling scrap aluminum requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminum.

Why should we recycle?

• Recycling conserves energy; it takes less energy to produce new products from recycled materials.
• It saves natural resources, which sometimes can’t be replaced.
• It keeps the environment clean.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours — or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline.
• 350,000 aluminum cans are produced every minute!
• About one-third of an average dump is made up of packaging material!
• There is no limit to the amount of times aluminum can be recycled.

Composting at MBTS

Montessori By The Sea has been turning some of their trash into treasure this year with the introduction of their school-wide composting program.

Composting is the word to describe when plant matter decomposes (with the help of fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates) back into fertile soil.  This soil can be then used to fertilize plants and helps them grow.

The children were delighted to learn that this happens when the critters munch on the trash, and poop out the compost!  Nutritious compost is actually bug poop – the ultimate lesson that nature recycles everything!

Each classroom, from Casa upwards, has a compost bin located next to their garbage cans, and students have been placing their plant based lunch and snack scraps into the compost bin.  At the end of each day, a “Captain Compost” from each classroom empties the buckets into a larger bucket that goes home nightly with Ms. Sarah, who has an enormous compost pile in her backyard.

Every so often, Ms. Sarah returns a batch of compost from the pile back to school for students to fertilize the class and school plants with.  We hope to eventually collect enough compost to actually grow a school veggie garden.