Environmental Programs 

Wildlife Show & Tell

With the unexpected extension of Home Learning for Prep - Year 10 students, we have more opportunity to contribute to the Wildlife Show & Tell My Aitken page. So far, there have been some exciting little critters that have been featured on the page, including a bat! This certainly has been a fun way to put a positive spin on spending a lot of time at home. To see the latest additions to the page and to add your own photos of critters near your home, go to https://myaitken.fireflycloud.net.au/environmental-programs-1/wildlife-show-and-tell. I know we have all enjoyed sharing and celebrating the beautiful Australian environments in our own ‘back yard’. Let’s look forward to more!

EcoBricks

Last semester, Aitken families did a wonderful job of bringing in their soft-plastic EcoBricks. Let’s keep it going and continue to minimise the amount of landfill we produce by collecting soft plastics into empty plastic bottles. Here are some useful tips when making your EcoBricks:

• Pack them as full as you can. Try using the end of a wooden spoon to really pack them full. It’s hard work!
• The bottle must have a cap. Without the cap, it cannot be used as an EcoBrick. If you don’t have the lid, recycle the bottle and find another bottle to use that does have a lid.
• Keep the bottle next to your rubbish bin. Any time you have soft plastics to throw out, pack it into the bottle straight away rather than waiting until you have a huge bag to stuff into bottles which can be a bit time consuming.

Don’t have enough empty plastic bottles? Don’t worry, you can take your excess soft plastics to a REDcycle drop-off location, including participating Woolworths and Coles locations. To find out more about the REDcycle program, including what is considered a ‘soft-plastic’ and what is not, go to https://www.redcycle.net.au/what-to-redcycle/.

We will continue to collect EcoBricks for the rest of the year. This will extend the fun we’ve had minimising landfill by collecting soft plastics into compact EcoBricks as described in the dedicated My Aitken page (go to https://myaitken.fireflycloud.net.au/environmental-programs-1/iso-ecobricks). In Term 4, we will combine all completed EcoBricks and build a structure to commemorate the hard work that has gone into keeping soft plastics out of landfill and the creation of our EcoBricks. Keep an eye out for more information about what we might build and where.

Ms Cristy Herron

Head of Environmental Programs