Before they even reached the park, the pupils started their work, collecting rubbish they saw along their way. Photo / Ilona Hanne
Before they even reached the park, the pupils started their work, collecting rubbish they saw along their way. Photo / Ilona Hanne
By Ilona Hanne
Pupils at Stratford Primary School decided to celebrate Earth Day early this year, as the actual date falls during their school holidays next week.
On Friday, pupils all wore green to celebrate, but the year 7 and 8 pupils decided to do a bit more for Earth Day.
On Tuesday the youngsters headed to Stratford's Victoria Park armed with gloves and rubbish bags, ready to clean up the mess they saw around the place.
Noah Corlett (12) came up with the idea with his friends Dayton Herewini-Sanson (12) and Anden Pickfrod (12).
"We wanted to do something about all the rubbish we see. I come to the skate park here a lot and it's so dirty. I thought it would be good if we did a clean-up."
Noah says they had the idea when they were talking about reading in the paper that Stratford was judged to be the "dirtiest" town in Taranaki.
"That was pretty bad, I thought, so this is a way we can fix that."
Noah says when they talked about it with the rest of their class, lots of the pupils said Victoria Park and the skate park area were particularly bad.
(l-r) Anden Pickford, Dayton Herewini-Sanson and Noah Corlett came up with the idea to clean up the local skate park. Photo / Ilona Hanne
Dayton is also a regular user of the skate park and says he can't believe how much rubbish is left there by people.
"It's not like the bins are far away. People just don't care and dump it."
Anden says they walked from school to the skate park and started picking up rubbish on the way.
"The train tracks were really bad. It was just disgusting. Lots of cigarette butts, things like that just dumped. Lots of broken glass too."
Teacher Ashleigh Crowley says she was impressed by the pupils' commitment to cleaning up.
"They've all got involved and are all picking up lots of rubbish."
Marlene Lewis had accompanied the class to the park as well. As the Stratford Primary School Enviro School co-ordinator - something she describes as being "the best job in the world" - she was thrilled with the pupil-led efforts being made to tidy up the town.
"It's really good that this came from them. They saw the problem and came up with the solution."
