Sustainabilty News

Sustainability news 

Wear it Wild day- Introducing:  Sir Flipper the sea turtle!

We have received our adopted animal for the World Wildlife Fund and the Sustainability group have named him Sir Flipper. We hope to have him at the office soon, so you can say hello. The money we have raised will help to monitor and improve conditions for these beautiful animals in the wild.

By participating in Wear it Wild day we have also completed several actions in our Resource Smart Schools portal. Resource Smart Schools is a free program offered by Sustainability Victoria that supports Victorian schools to embed sustainability across the school facilities, community and curriculum, while saving resources and money for the school. Currently we are working on our ‘Core’, ‘Biodiversity’ and ‘Waste’ modules. When we complete all 5 modules we will become a Five Star Sustainable school.

Victorian School’s Garden program grant

Wales street has applied for this grant to help in our aim to plant a habitat garden along the Speight street garden beds. We are hoping for $500 to go towards buying native plants and fixing edges of our garden beds. Hopefully we will know the results by mid-June and be able to start our project in Term 3. 

Compost Carl

Our Green cone composting bin Compost Carl is now in action behind the Fete shed! Thank you very much to Kellie Marks and Claire Parish for establishing him in his new home during our recent working . The students have been very curious and he is receiving lots of food scraps, saving these from landfill and reducing Wales Street’s carbon footprint. 

Biodiversity audit

Next week our Resource Smart schools coordinator Bella will be helping us to conduct a biodiversity audit. The Sustainability Group will work with Bella to list all the plants and animals we have currently at Wales street and will give us some of ideas of how we can improve our biodiversity score.

Weeding Wednesday

Wales Street received a $150 grant from Bunnings Fairfield to buy equipment for our new initiative ‘Weeding Wednesday’. Each year level has nominated a month in which they will go out into the yard and find weeds to pull out. Currently it is our lovely Preps who will learn what a weed is, identifying weeds and why we need to pull out the weeds we find. This learning will go towards our Biodiversity star for Resource Smart schools and help to improve student’s knowledge of and appreciation for the plants in our outdoor spaces. 

Container deposit scheme- donations needed

The Sustainability groups’ action from our Resource Smart school summit was to raise money through the container deposit scheme for a kookaburra and a Rainbow lorikeet nesting boxes. We are asking for donations from the community of the containers participating in the scheme to help us achieve our goal. The sustainability group have prepared a box for donations that will be situated just outside the office and would be grateful for any bottles you can spare. 

Toby Marquette

WSPS Sustainability coordinator