Guardians of St Leonard's: Leaders' Report

Last term, 5 representatives of the Guardian’s of St Leonard’s, Alfie, Anthonio, Sharayah, Catia and Ariana, along with Miss Sammut were invited to attend a special excursion to CERES in Brunswick. We were invited to participate in a conference which was focused around the Container Deposit Scheme while also learning about other topics around the idea of sustainability. 

Container Deposit Scheme

While we were there, we learnt more about the program and how we can improve on what we are already doing to collect more bottles and cans. We were given the opportunity to think about how we can improve on what we are doing as a school to collect more cans and bottles to raise money for our school. 

Some of the ideas we had included: 

- Asking local cafes and sporting clubs to collect cans and bottles from their customers and members. These can then be picked up from these locations and added into our collection bins at school.

- A day where students bring in as many cans and bottles as they can and they each get a raffle ticket to have the opportunity to win a sustainable prize. 

We enjoyed seeing what other schools do to advertise to promote the Container Deposit scheme to their school community. Surprisingly most of the schools had different ways to advertise this. We really liked hearing all of them since we could possibly use them for our advertisement. Some of the ideas included: having rewards and having one area in the school to collect the containers.

Recycling

The 5 of us were directed to go in a room with all the other schools and we learnt how we can recycle many different things, like how and where to recycle your bottles, we learnt that only some things are recyclable like cardboard, paper, glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles and metal cans and foil. We also learnt that it's important to make sure that these things are clean and empty when you're putting them in the bin.

Presentation 

The guardians also shared a presentation and showed how well we were going. Other schools were really impressed with how much we had achieved. e made a video to show the school community. We also want to grow the amount of donations we are getting so we can reach our goal. Some key features that we included in our presentation were how much money we raised and what we were raising it for.

Please see images below from our presentation. 

Wildlife

During the tour around CERES we saw some amazing wildlife. We saw birds like owls, parrots, rosellas and we saw some little rats sneaking around everywhere. We also saw some farm animals like chickens and they actually use the chickens manure to fertilize their plants and gardens. It was very interesting to see all these animals at little spots around CERES. 

From the Guardians Captains of 2025 - Alfie and Ariana