St Francis Xavier School has held ‘Enviro school’ status since 2006, when it was presented by the Regional Council with a Bronze award, after submitting a scrapbook of evidence of education for sustainability practices within the school.

Students and teachers alike wanted to further their quest to look after God’s creation. A group of keen, environmentally-minded students then began investigating the small stream that runs through the school.

They set themselves up as the ‘Clean Green Stream Team’ to look at the problem of eels dying in the stream and create solutions to stop this from happening. This work encouraged the return of the eels, and the stream area was planted to create a wetland for all sorts of other native creatures.

The team then entered the Community Problem Solving competition and won the National finals in Auckland, followed by another win at the International finals in Michigan, USA.
St Francis Xavier School was elevated to ‘Silver Enviroschool’ status, in 2008. Since then many more enviro initiatives have taken place at the school. Northland Regional Council grants helped enable a native bird garden to be established, school gardens with a wonderful irrigation system to be set up, worm farms were established, and a prayer garden was developed.

The prayer garden was planted with figs, olives, and grapes – the sorts of food Jesus would have eaten. Full-size statues of Mary and Jesus are set into pergolas in the garden, which is the perfect setting for Religious Education lessons or a quiet prayer time alone. Students are rostered daily to check the school grounds are rubbish-free. School rubbish is sorted, recycled, composted or fed to our school worm farms so that we minimise rubbish sent to the landfill.

We are part of the Paper for Trees programme and the whole school takes place in litter-free lunch box challenges twice each term.

Students in the Middle School work with Tahi Honey to tend bee hives locally. Using wax sourced from our bees, keen enviro leaders create beeswax wraps, an alternative to plastic in lunch boxes and are sold along with the honey produced by our bees.

Middle school students also participate in bi-annual Experiencing Marine Reserves programmes to learn about care for the marine environment.

Education for Sustainability is embedded into classroom planning throughout the school. It is an integral part of our life at St Francis Xavier as we live out our role of kaitiaki/guardians of planet Earth.