Thursday 27 February 2014

Welcome to our Eco-Warriors Blog

We are a committed group of Year 4-6 students who use one lunchtime every week to help clean up the Elm Park Reserve. This reserve is next to our school.



Some of us have been involved for some years but we have not recorded our actions on a blog before....

So, WELCOME to our blog. We will show the types of litter we pick up each week.  We have lots of metal tongs to help us pick up the rubbish hygienically and we have gloves.  But some people didn't use the tongs for the photos!! We will remember next Thursday lunchtime.

We will also shortly begin water quality testing again and comment on the state of our Pakuranga Stream.  In the past we have recorded samples for Waicare and we found out that the quality of the water was very poor because of the lack of invertebrates in our stream. 

Snails were the most abundant water creature and this showed that the water quality was not good.  We wrote a letter to the  editor at the Howick & Eastern Times  asking for information about the stream and a local resident contacted us about its history.  At one time it was possible to canoe down the stream to the Tamaki River but this can no longer be done. This is due to the silting up of the stream.

We were disappointed to see rubbish in the stream and beside the walkway - look at the photos below...


Rubbish dumped off the walkway on the north side of the bridge - we found the top of this monitor as well

Too much litter like this - we need to protect the stream, the fish and the larger marine animals who can eat this rubbish thinking it is food!


Some of this rubbish could come from EPS some students thought...

These road work cones concerned us- perhaps the Council can take them out...

Rubbish on the stream bank... rain would have washed it in...


Yuck!

Lots and lots of plastic

AJ volunteered to get the plastic toy in the stream


Poor, unwanted money bank

The landfill rubbish is dropped in the Council rubbish bins - the paper, cardboard and glass are recycled in our school bins


We all agreed that we have a big job to do!

Please comment on our blog if you are protecting a similar reserve like ours.
EPS Eco-Warriors

4 comments:

jtuineau said...

Hi EcoWarriors of Elm Park and its stream; your commitment to reducing litter makes a difference, not only to your tiny neighbours living in the water, but to the people who see that they should reduce litter too. I hope you meet many other schools through this blog. Julia

Unknown said...

I am very proud of the work you are doing to keep the stream clean or all the litter people are leaving in the stream. We need to encourage our neighbours to help out so that the water is clean for the creatures living in the water. Keep up the excellent work Eco Warriors. Thank you to Mrs Hodge for encouraging you all to participate in this project. Mrs Plowright

Unknown said...

Thanks Eco-Warriors! It makes me so sad to see rubbish on our walkways and more-so in the water, but what an awesome job you're doing, showing such commitment for our environment and our future. I sure appreciate your good work when I walk home across the field and through the back walkway. I wonder what else we could do to improve the water quality?

Mrs H said...

Great work Elm Park Eco Warriors - it's a lovely stream. Hopefully your commitment will rub off on the people dropping litter. Keep up the good work.