Our Stormwater Sleuths have worked hard, studying the impact of our school on stormwater pollution in our catchment. At the best of times, it has been an interesting study in human behaviour; “How did that get there?!” and at other times it was a distinctly mucky and stinky job! Our student scientists got on with it like the professionals they have become and embraced the other learning opportunities that arose around the topic.

To celebrate the hard work and dedication of our stormwater sleuths, we went to the zoo last week. The wonderful people at Auckland Zoo designed a bespoke programme just for the Stormwater Sleuths. We had a wonderful time at the zoo and learnt about how the zoo was trying to be more sustainable with their water usage and waste going to landfill. It was pretty amazing to find out that the zoo is using man-made wetland technology to help filter the water from Western Springs.

The favourite part I took away was the fact the zoo’s mission was to make the water that came into the zoo from Western Springs cleaner when it left - Daniel

The thing I took away from the zoo was that they found a turtle with lots of rubbish inside and they are trying not to use that much wood and they used some plastic in the bridge - Joshua

Something I learned from our zoo trip was that some Auckland Zoo workers sort their rubbish after the visitors put the rubbish in the bin and sorted with their hands - Xanthe