News and Information from Lilydale Heights College

Sustainability

Tania Lim

Suscience Week

This last month has been a busy preparation time for the Sus Club, as we get ready for our inaugural Suscience Week – Sustainability and Science Week combined.    Every year, world and national ‘days’ or ‘weeks’ are designated to commemorate and/or celebrate various aspects of our culture. For the Sus Club, these include Sustainability Week, Ride-to-School Week, World Environment Day, Science Week, Keep Australia Beautiful Week and many, many more. These days and/or weeks are often themed, to bring attention to key areas of focus.   As much as we would love to, it is unfeasible to celebrate every one of those days, weeks and themes. So, this year, we have decided to combine our school’s Sustainability and Science Week into a single week-long event, with our own theme, developed from a combination of our ResourceSmart School goals and those of the celebratory weeks mentioned above.     

 

We will be celebrating Suscience Week from Monday 11 August 2025 until Saturday 16 August 2025. Our theme will be:

 

Connecting communities to decode the universe, beat plastic pollution and conserve energy. 

 

Check out the activities planned for the week!

Rug Up Day

Note that Friday 15 August will be the school’s gold coin donation free dress day for the term. On this day, the Sus Club and SIRC will be running Rug Up Day – a day we encourage everyone to come to school as warm and as rugged up as possible, because we will be turning off all the heating at school for the day!     The goal of Rug Up Day is to bring attention to our level of energy consumption and to empower us to consider means by which we can reduce or offset our carbon emissions. One of the easiest and simplest ways that we can do this, wherever we are, is to dress for the weather. To this end, we are in the process of introducing a warmer puffer-style jacket into our uniform range.     An energy audit was taken at the beginning of the year and another one will be conducted in a few months. It is hoped that by simply turning off the heating for a single day during the year, we will see a reduction in our energy consumption. With the money raised from the gold coin donations, we aim to construct a carbon sink at the front of the school to meet our carbon offset goals.   Why don’t you join us at home or at work? Rug up and turn off your heaters for the day!

 

What will you wear on Rug Up Day?

CDS Container Deposit Scheme

Did you know that every week, our school canteen sells, and our student body disposes into our waste bins, around 300 recyclable cans and bottles? That’s $1,200 each year that we’re throwing directly into landfill!      We have been putting some time and effort into modifying some wheelie bins to make them uniquely ours and we look forward to seeing them around the school ready for your eligible cans and bottles. In the meantime, we encourage everyone to hang onto them and bring them to school (Option A below), or donate them at a local CDS location using our Zone ID or Barcode (Option B below). 

A few members of the Sus Club show off our CDS bins – 

currently a work in progress as we install rubber rosettes.

 

How to donate your empty eligible drink containers

 

OPTION A

  1. Collect eligible containers – please do not crush the containers, because you may need to be able to scan the barcode.

  2. We suggest you put them in a bag or box to bring them to school.

  3. When you get to school, place the entire bag or box in the blue bin at front reception.

  4. The Sus Club will empty the bin out every month.

Jaxon from Hands On Learning helps the Sus Club to rivet rubber rosettes to the bins.

 

OPTION B

  1. Collect eligible containers – please do not crush the containers, because you may need to be able to scan the barcode.

  2. We suggest you put them in a bag or box to transport them to a recycling depot.

  3. Insert eligible containers into the machine and select donation point – Lilydale Heights College.

  4. You can choose to download and use the CDS Vic East App to find Lilydale Heights College, as a registered charity partner. This will allow you to set up donation payments as your preference. Alternatively at the depot select our school as a preferred payout option and the funds will be directly paid to our school via our Donation Partner ID:

 

Sus Club Meeting Time

A final note that we are always welcoming new Sus Club members. Our meeting times have now changed to Thursday at Recess in SHUB-0. See you there!