Recycling for Good Stuff

Woo-hoo, we won an award! Last week, at the 2025 School Sustainability Festival, little people from St Kilda Park Primary School were up on stage at the new Port Phillip Ecocentre, receiving Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme Award. Of all the schools, what SKiPPS has done, it stood out.

The recycling, the giving to others in the community.

Good stuff? Great stuff!

It’s made possible by all families who’ve dropped off containers in the box. Little glass Fever-Tree tonic water bottles. Big plastic mineral water bottles. All the brightly-coloured cans of sparkling water. It’s all so gratefully received, and processed, and Allison and the Green Team will soon choose a local charity to send funds to.

This term, $128.70 has been raised, and we’ll empty the box one more time on Thursday.

Well done to Allison and all who’ve made this scheme possible.

In other news, I’ve been commissioned by the Port Phillip Ecocentre to install and clad 18 wicking bed garden boxes outside their new building. It’s a five-star environment rated building, but I’m going for a nine-star job with what I’m doing, using ALL recycled and salvaged timbers.

In my mind, I’ll build a hardwood forest for them, a cladding of old tree trunks, finding patterns in nature, a beauty of old wood, carefully considered.

(If any children are free in the first week of holidays, come down and see what I’m up to – might give you a job to do! – in a lovely corner of the St Kilda Botanical Gardens).

But first, I need to finish the frames. And I’m chewing through the wood: I’ll need more!

What I’m after is framing timber. MGP. Machine-grade pine. Sticks of it. Any pieces longer than 1150mm are of use. Please spread the word; keep an eye out. Leftovers from a renovation. Lengths sticking out of a builder’s skip. An office fit-out pulled apart. You never know where it might turn up. Doesn’t matter if it has nails in it, or screws.

It’s a community project I’m doing, and I love the idea of materials being found and sourced and provided by a community. With thanks.

Dugald (0425 005 531)