World Soil Day
World Soil Day is celebrated every year on December 5th. FAO organized a campaign entitled: "Keep the soil alive, Protect biodiversity". The campaign aimed to:
-raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being,
-address the growing challenges of soil management,
-combate soil biodiversity loss, and
-encourage governments, organizations, communities and individuals around the world to commit to proactively improving soil health..
We asked our students if they would like to participate in this campaign by making comics. They were encouraged to take a look at the following presentation made by our Austrian partners, and the material provided by FAO (http://www.fao.org/world-soil-day/campaign-materials/en/) so as to design their products.
Students' comics were presented to online events to eTwinning live in order to promote our project and the use of Pixton app for designing comics to the teaching and learning activities. Here are presented the presentations used on the events.
These comics were also transfered to the following common e-Book designed by using bookcreator app.
COMPOSTER
Our Serbian partners created a composter box.
Anyone can do it.
You can do it!
What is composting?
Composting is controlled aerobic biodegradation of organic materials.
Aerobic - a process is happen in the presence of oxygen,
Biodegradation – breakdown of organic materials into their basic elements by living organisms.
Benefits of composting:
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reduce the amount of waste
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produce cheap and natural fertilizer
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process kills harmful pathogens
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environmental and economic benefit
Selection of materials for construction composters
Composters can be made of different materials - plastic, wood, old tires, metal wire ... Our composter is made of wood and metal wire.
Variables which control the process:
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temperature (40 – 65 ºC ; max 70 ºC)
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moisture (45 – 60% by weight )
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oxygen (5% oxygen at least)
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chemical and physical composition (C:N = 20-25:1 but 50:1 can work ; porosity 35 - 50%; not too small particles; pH = 5,5 - 8;)
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size and shape of the heap (large enough to avoid rapid heat and water loss;
small enough to allow for aeration )…
The ideal ratio between the brown and the green part is 3: 1
Possible problems with composting and how to solve them:
1. If your compost pile not heat up you can
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add more greens,
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add water if it’s dry,
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add compost from other pile,
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add soil from wood
2. If your compost pile smells bad you can
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add more browns,
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mix it,
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check water loss,
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add tree branches.
