Sustainability News

This year has been very successful for St. Marys and the Sustainability team mainly due to the resilience and persistence of a few parent helpers who have consistently pushed to recognise and achieve the need to reduce waste. Katie Schade and Leanne Akers are two parents along with Malina Currie who have diligently driven three groundbreaking programs at school this year. They have encouraged PnF to go green where possible and with the help of some school initiatives like “Cup Rescue” we have progressed in reducing waste at school functions. Thank you so much Katie and Leanne for all your hard work and commitment. Also thanks to the sustainability team for their valuable input and sharing with the school community.

Together we have achieved:

The initiative “Plant a difference” - a very successful fundraiser for the school which also helped to plant many trees.
The waste watcher mascot program where the children got to name and design a character which will be displayed around the school.
The bottle cap program where milk lids have been collected saving them from going to landfill and with the help of the creativity team, the school logo has been painted and will be filled with bottle tops to be displayed in the walkway near the tennis courts early next year.

Staff have also helped to reduce waste.

Miss Gooden and the Year Preps recycle their food scraps for the worm farm which was begun last year by Leanne Akers and Tess.
Ms Jones is promoting the pilot program of “game on recycling” to recycle balls and bats that are no longer viable.
Each class tries to “be nice and reuse paper twice”.
We are all trying to reduce the need to photocopy and use the right bins.
The office purchases recycled photocopy paper and rainforest alliance tea bags.
Nude food continues to be one of our best initiatives to reduce waste.

Next year beginning on February 1st, single use plastic of some items will be banned in Victoria.- cutlery, plates, drink stirrers, cotton tips, straws and polystyrene food packaging will be BANNED.

More parents are willing to get involved in 2023 which is fabulous. We will be looking for helpers to assist in the garden program, apply for grants to improve our school biodiversity and write blogs to acknowledge our progress.

We have maintained our other recycling programs with :

Terracycle for toothpaste products

Officeworks for batteries and textas,

Bread tags for Wheelchairs.

Thank you to every family for supporting less packaging. Every little bit helps.

We are so close to achieving our second ResourceSmart School star.

Waste poem

by Alice and Giselle Year 5 2022

Worms working fast

Bees dying faster

Cycles keep on moving

Lots of natural disasters