The Green Team

Alex Baxter & Elise Hawkins

Sustainability Team

Welcome back to another year everyone! We hope everyone had a relaxing break and got to spend some time out in nature enjoying this beautiful, hot summer. This year is going to be another huge one for Sustainability at Kingswood.

What's new for Sustainability?

Take in, Take out - Over the past few years, students have been encouraged to bring food to school without packaging. Furthermore, all rubbish brought to school in student lunch boxes will now be returned back home in their lunch boxes. The aim of this is to provide a practical, real and positive way to encourage healthy eating and teach waste minimisation. Please continue to aim for zero waste in your child/ren's lunch box.
Pollution Patrol - each class will elect its own monitors to lead the way with sustainable initiatives in their classrooms and around the school.
Soft plastics - whilst we had our soft plastic program last year, this year it will be better than ever with students involved with the whole process. Each class has chosen a week in the year, to sign up to be responsible for the soft plastics across the whole school. Each class will be responsible for collecting the schools soft plastics and delivering them to Woolworths or Coles. We aim for this to engage the students more so they feel empowered by the positive difference they are having on the environment. Whilst we encourage classes to walk to the shops themselves, we understand that this isn't possible for every grade so we have suggested that classes ask parents for assistance in delivering the soft plastics. If your child's class requires assistance they will ask for some help on Compass so just keep an eye out.
Community Feedback and Ideas - As we 'thrive in a team culture', we would really appreciate any feedback or ideas from our Kingswood community throughout the year. Please click here to contribute your thoughts, ideas or suggestions for improving sustainability at Kingswood. This link will remain open all year so please feel free to contribute at any time.
Grants - work will hopefully begin in Term 1 on our vertical gardens. We have decided to create one communal garden space near the kitchen for classes to use so keep an eye out for that. Our other grant we received later last year, will assist in buying plants, watering systems, cameras for the nest boxes, bird baths and other gardening related items around the school.

What's staying the same?

Even though we've submitted all the documentation for our 'Waste' star, we would like to first consolidate this area throughout the year before moving onto the 'Biodiversity' or 'Water' stars. We feel we still have some areas to work on in regards to waste including the Canteen's waste generation, our school events and general day to day waste production.
Green Team has been such a success with around 30 students attending each week. This year, Green Team will be held on a Monday lunchtime in Miss Baxter's room beginning in Week 5 (25/02). Please encourage your child/ren to come along if you think it's something they may be interested in. The Environment Leaders run the sessions with gardening, fun games, arts and crafts and many other fun activities planned.
Soft plastics - whilst we no longer have the soft plastic collection bins in the foyer of the Hall, please still feel free to send your soft plastics from home to school with your child and they can put them in their own class soft plastic bin.

Thank you to everyone for all your support with Sustainability at Kingswood so far along our journey. We are very excited to see what 2019 has in store for us!