Recycling for Good Stuff

There’s been a mouse at the school. This term and last, cans and bottles have been pinched from the collection box at the top gate. I make no judgement: the mouse is recycling, and who knows of their needs. It’s likely a hard life, being a mouse.

But it’s been frustrating. The idea of the collection boxes is to recycle – to tread as lightly on our precious Earth as we can – but also to send money to causes that are beyond ‘self’. It offers a teaching moment: showing children how a community can help others.

The ‘giving’ can also open-up wonderful opportunities for SKiPPS children. Allison and the Green Team, for example, donated $100 to Earthcare St Kilda from the Term 1 collection, to help protect the local penguin colony. Earthcare contacted the school, and in gratitude offered to take a group of children on a sunset tour to visit the penguins after dark.

How much fun! A good thing, born of good things.

I’ve put a lid on the ‘top box’ to deter the mouse, and am pleased to report - so far - it’s working. Last week, I collected 150 cans, and plastic and glass bottles. Thanks to all who popped them ‘down the hole’ – great work!

The running total since the last donation is at $90.70. Next door at the Bowling Club, where one of the SKiPPS dads, Scotty, helped establish a similar initiative, two collection boxes have raised $1337 and counting (10c at a time) for St Kilda’s Sacred Heart Mission.

From little things…

If you can, please keep recycling the 10c container deposit scheme bottles and cans at the school (‘down the hole’), and I’ll empty the top box every Thursday and post occasional updates. How much, and where the Green Team choose to send the money.

Also, if any are interested, a story I wrote recently was published in the Good Weekend magazine. It was about going to court, finding myself on the wrong side of the law, and the children at SKiPPS and another school were part of my defence. 

They’re not named, but implicated. They got me in (and out of) this trouble! The story is behind a paywall - ‘Your honour, it was an honour’: My courtroom victory – but reckon some can find a way around it. As a mouse might.

Dugald