Sustainability @ TPPS
In this week’s newsletter, we would like to share with you the fantastic story of the achievements our school has made in reducing our waste! This has been a work in progress over many years.
Waste Free Policy and Nude Food
Our first project was to introduce a Waste Free School policy. We educated our school community and families about the amount of waste that is produced by lunchboxes, and encouraged students and parents to bring in “nude food” lunchboxes. All the bins in the playground were removed besides two, and students are required to eat their food inside, and leave packaging inside. Any food wrappers from lunches are taken home to be disposed of.
Composting
To support this policy, we set up a composting system onsite near our vegetable garden. Each classroom has a food scraps bucket and the students and staff are educated about what can be placed inside. Classes work with the sustainability teacher to empty and process the food scraps through the compost bins. The compost produced is used in the vegetable gardens. Some scraps are also used in the two worm farms at our school. The “worm wee” and resulting compost is also used on the gardens.
Multi Bin System
We replaced our one waste bin per classroom with a multi-bin system. The landfill bin was replaced with a very small red bin. This bin was accompanied by a blue bin for paper recycling and a yellow bin for mixed recycling. We discovered that it made it easier for students and teachers to place rubbish in the correct bin if the bins were located on different sides of the room rather than all next to each other. The big success of this change in bin systems is that our red landfill bins are usually only half filled by the end of each day now.
Chickens
Introducing chickens to our school helped us to get closer to creating a circular economy with our food scraps and vegetable gardens. Besides some food scraps being fed to the hens, the chicken manure, used straw and bedding were combined with the food scraps to produce rich compost for our gardens.
E-waste
E-waste such as used batteries and broken technology is collected in a specific bin located in the staffroom. This bin is emptied when needed at an appropriate facility, keeping these dangerous items out of landfill.
Officeworks Recycling
A new initiative has been to collect used pens and markers for recycling at Officeworks. Each classroom has a box that they can place their finished whiteboard markers, textas and ballpoint pens in, and a parent helper assists us to deliver these to Officeworks when we have filled the boxes.
Litter Collection
Each week a different class takes turns to clean up any stray litter in the school grounds using a set of buckets and tongs. We believe that this litter is made up of canteen packaging, rubbish blown in from outside the school/people walking through out of hours, and a smaller percentage is food packets taken into the playground instead of left inside after eating time.
Sustainability Representatives
To reduce the amount of canteen packaging blowing away, the Sustainability Representatives spoke at Assembly to the students and reminded them to eat outside the canteen only and to make sure their rubbish goes in the bin. They also asked for new bins to be supplied for the canteen area, that hold more rubbish and have a flip lid that prevents rubbish from being blown out by the wind. This has made a big difference to the amount of litter.
Learning in Class
Our students have undertaken many investigations into the problems of waste and ways to help our environment. These lessons have been held during Sustainability classes and also during Inquiry and Literacy. Students are encouraged to solve problems together and to promote our Waste Free Policy actively using methods such as creating posters, speaking at Assembly and making short videos.
We have more improvements to make in the area of managing our waste, but we are really proud of how far we have come. Our success is not only in the reduction of waste in our school, but also the change we have seen in the school culture and understanding of our students and families. We couldn’t have done this without your support, so thank you!
Lead To Sustain Conference
On Friday the 31st of October, Ms Conn and Miss Demetriou accompanied the Grade 3-6 Sustainability Reps and Captains to the Currawong Bush Park for the annual Lead To Sustain Conference. This event is run by Manningham Council for students in this area. We gathered to learn about sustainability through workshops, nature walks, talks and performances. A highlight was getting up close and personal with beautiful Australian mammals, reptiles, birds and insects. In spite of the rain, we all had a wonderful time and our students are to be commended for their excellent behaviour and enthusiasm.
