Clean Up Australia at St Kilda Beach

This week, our Year 6 students stepped beyond the school gates and into our local community to mark Clean Up Australia Day with an excursion to St Kilda Beach.

Armed with gloves, bags and a strong sense of responsibility, students worked together to collect and remove rubbish from the foreshore. What may seem like a simple activity was, in reality, a powerful act of leadership.

In Year 6 at SKiPPS, we place a strong emphasis on leadership. We talk often about leadership not simply as wearing a badge or holding a title, but as taking action, showing initiative and contributing positively to the community around us. This excursion was a practical example of exactly that.

Our students demonstrated:

• Pride in their local environment
• Kindness towards their community

• Perseverance as they worked carefully and thoroughly along the beach

   

By caring for a shared public space, students experienced what it means to give back.

They saw first-hand the impact that small actions can have when many people work together with a common purpose. Importantly, they were reminded that leadership is about service, responsibility and setting an example for others.

Living and learning in St Kilda means that the beach is part of our community identity. Taking the time to protect and care for it reinforces our connection to place and our shared responsibility for the environment.

To give families a deeper insight into the day, three of our Year 6 students have written reflections about the experience. These accounts share what they observed, what surprised them and what they learned about teamwork, environmental responsibility and leadership.

We are incredibly proud of the way our Year 6 students represented SKiPPS in the community. Their actions this week are a strong reminder that leadership is not just something we talk about. It is something we practise.

Clean Up Australia Day 

Clean up Australia day originated in 1989 created by fellow Australian Ian Keirnan. He created Clean up Australia Day because he was out on his boat one day and he couldn’t believe how much waste is in our ocean. Today more than 22 million people have participated in this day.

Today 6A and 6L went to explore St Kilda Beach for litter it may have, but first we had to get there. Lou gradually guided us out to the beach we crossed roads, walking slowly and picking up any rubbish found and depositing it into the closest bin. Once there, we started to pick up all the litter. We all received a pair of gloves and some people took charge of holding a bag with either a recycling symbol or a landfill symbol.  

We searched all over the beach collecting cigarettes, lolly wrappers, cans, lighters, and even syringes, which were safely housed in a yellow hazards container. Once we got back, we sorted all the rubbish into categories like cigarette butts, soft plastics, recycling, cans, e waste, rubber and clothing onto extremely large tarps. We discussed with Ali and the teachers which bin the waste would go into. We emptied the piles into larger bins for compost, landfill and recycling.

With the amount of waste we found, I pledge to use organic materials so I don’t contribute to the waste put into our ocean. I was so shocked by the amount of rubbish we found because I didn’t realise how much people litter on the beach and our waterways and the effect that it has.

By Jaspar OC

CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA

Ian Kiernan the founder of Clean up Australia day and the winner of the Australian of the year award in 1994. Clean up Australia Day takes place on the 1st of March. Since they started 22 million people have participated in the event.

The year 6 SKiPPS classes went to St Kilda beach to pick up rubbish and we filled up 10 bags of rubbish in 1 hour. SKiPPS takes pride in our leadership program. 

The next day, year 6 classes sorted all the rubbish into categories such as, soft plastic and e-waste, we found out that soft plastic was used much more than other recyclable plastics and recyclable materials.

I want to use more recyclables and less plastic.

Hardy

CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA DAY 

Hello there, everyone. Today my class and I went to the beach for a very special event that happens on March 1 but we went before March 1st.

The event in question is Clean up Australia! Founded by Ian Kieran in the early 90’s.

We walked to St Kilda Beach to clean our land we share with the First Nations People but when we got there I was SHOCKED to see how much garbage that was laying around on the beach!

We all put on gloves, at the same time landfill and recycling bags were handed out. 

After that, we started picking up trash, then put it in the bag. After an hour we started to head back while picking up more trash off the ground. 

Finally we started walking back to school. We didn’t pick up every piece of trash but, we still picked up a lot! 

After we cleaned up at the beach. We started putting each piece of recycling, landfill, etc into different categories. When everyone put on 2 gloves as we walked to the area where all the bags of trash were there were 3 rugs. It was to sort each piece of trash.

After the teachers explained what we had to do, we started sorting the pieces of rubbish into each pile. It took at least an hour and a half. 

In the end, we noticed how many piles of trash there were. It was a lot, though we didn’t pick up every piece of rubbish at the beach! So we need to not litter that much, anymore.

 By Gabey