Sustainability

Climate Change Summit

On Thursday 13th October the Sustainability Leaders and the year 5/6 Planet Savers attended the Climate Change Summit for schools online. This event was run by the State Library of Victoria. We learned about what climate change is and actions to help stop climate change.

Climate change is the long term changes of the weather getting more severe and hotter. The earth has heated 1.1 degrees Celsius since industrial farming and living began. How warm it becomes depends on what changes we make in the next few decades. If we continue our actions the temperature on earth could rise more than 3 degrees Celsius. Our goal is to keep the temperature rise less than 1.5 degrees. This will be possible if we start making change now. It would be ideal to switch to complete renewable energy and sustainable farming but this is difficult so we need to keep hope and do small things at home. Little actions like the ones below can make a huge difference:

• Use reusable containers or beeswax wraps which is just like gladwrap but sustainable! 

• Buy your food in bulk because bulk food comes with less packaging and plastic.
• Make your own food to go inside your lunchbox instead of buying it in plastic.

• Buy sustainable palm oil products. The logo on the right is printed onto products that use sustainable palm oil. Look for this symbol when you next go shopping and see if you can do a sustainable palm oil shop. Palm oil hides in many products such as chocolate, biscuits, bread, noodles, ice cream, soap, detergent, pizza and butter. Products containing palm oil without the sustainable logo contribute to the destruction of rainforests and therefore endanger animals. If you are interested in products that contain palm oil and why visit https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/which-everyday-products-contain-palm-oil.
• Walk to school if possible.
• Turn off the lights when you are not in the room.
• Plant trees and bushes in your garden.

This helps to reduce our carbon footprint. We can’t do everything perfectly but every little bit counts!

By Emily

Here is a delicious recipe to try so that you can bring your sweet treat to school wrapper free! By Mysia

JAFFA  BALLS

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup dedicated coconut

4 pitted meejoo dates

1 tbs cocoa powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 orange (juice) 1/2 zest

Instructions

• Add the oats and coconut to a food processor and blend until they have broken down into a crumb. 
• Add the dates, cacao powder, cinnamon, orange juice and half the zest. Blend until fully combined. 
• Using your hands, roll heaped teaspoons of the mixture into balls. Makes approximately 25 balls from the mixture.