Sustainability

Green Magpies

As an award-winning 5-Star Resource Smart School, the Green Magpies consistently take action and audit four key areas: Biodiversity, Energy, Waste, and Water.

At the end of Term 2 and the start of Term 3, all students attended Waste Management Education sessions, conducted by the City of Greater Bendigo.  We learned how we manage our waste, recycling, and organics.

We covered topics such as:

• How to sort our waste, recycling, and organics
• Tips - Better recycling
• Where does Greater Bendigo’s waste, recycling, and organics go?
• Changes to how we manage waste, recycling, and organics
• What can everyone do to reduce waste?

In Week 6, the Green Magpies conducted a Waste Audit to investigate how much waste classrooms and different areas are producing. We selected five bins to examine, recording what types of waste were inside, counting the quantity of items, and weighing the contents. This allowed us to collect data, reflect on our findings, and begin forming questions about how we can make a greater impact in our fight against waste.

After the audit, we evaluated the information we gathered about the classroom bins. 

• We noticed... some waste was in the incorrect bin.
• We noticed... some classes have the incorrect size bins.
• We noticed... that EPS has little to no rubbish in the landfill bins. Yay! 🥳

• We wondered... Why the senior grade levels had more rubbish than junior grades?

  We wondered... How we could educate staff about nude food, to reduce the amount of waste in the landfill bins.

As an award-winning 5-Star Resource Smart School, we were invited by Resource Smart to be presenters at the Hope & Action Education Day. As the Grade 3/4s were at camp, a group of Grade 5 students presented.  Thank you to Mr I for organising all of our equipment and helping us with setting up and packing up.

Hope & Action Recount 

By Emmett J. and Kaylee D.

We’re the Green Magpies that went on the Hope and Action Day on Wednesday, the 3rd of September, at the Garden of the Future in White Hills. We were the only primary school to be invited to present to Grade 3s & 4s from across the Bendigo Region. 

We spoke about the Resource Smart categories, which are water, waste,  biodiversity and energy. The categories were prepared by:

• Water - Katie and Denny
• Waste - Chloe and Mason
• Biodiversity - Knox and Emmett
• Energy - Kaylee

We presented to three schools: Marist College, Inglewood Primary School and Holy Rosary.

Everyone who went had so much fun. We enjoyed teaching all the other schools on ways to stay sustainable and we also had fun learning from other schools as well. 

Here are some of the things we mentioned in the presentation:

• Energy - talked about how we have signs around the school that tell everyone to turn off the lights and that we have solar panels. 
• Waste - talked about the bin award and how to sort rubbish. 
• Water - talked about the bird baths and tanks
• Biodiversity - talked about different bee types and bee hotels on our bush block.

Green Gurruks (Green Nest Community Members)

"A massive THANK YOU to our Green Gurruks who care for our animals and gardens over the school holidays. We appreciate your ongoing support." - Epsom Primary School

Green Nest

The Grade Ones have been attending weekly Green Nest Discovery sessions. This term, we learned about capsicums. We cut up some of the capsicums that we harvested in the greenhouse. We learned that you can eat most of the capsicum. We generally don't eat capsicum stems because they are tough. We used the seeds to plant more capsicums in our greenhouse! 

Yes! They can eat it raw, cooked, or roasted. The entire pepper, including the flesh, seeds, and core, is safe for them to consume. Capsicums are a good source of vitamins A and C, which can benefit the chickens' immune system.

Yes! All colours of capsicums (green, red, yellow, orange) are safe and beneficial for guinea pigs. They are a good source of vitamin C, which guinea pigs need because they can't produce it themselves.