Recycling for Good Stuff

In the shade of a peppercorn tree, on a grassed bank beside the school, we emptied bags and tipped over tall collection boxes, made a fabulous racket, sorting out aluminium cans and plastic water bottles from waste that has no better home than landfill.

Who knew sorting out ‘rubbish’ could be so much fun?

Ava was first to arrive and my heart skipped (you never know if anyone will turn up to these sort of things), and she put on gloves and got to work and was terrific at it; diligent, careful, considered. Then Vinnie came with his bicycle helmet on, asked if he could join in, and of course he could.

Our commotion attracted a crowd, mostly the SKiPPS Heat basketball team, here was a training warm-up, and they pitched in with others, Mia, James, Theo, Aggie, Eli, Freddy, Yarra, Ezra, Pau, Alby, Rosie and Bodhi – and many hands makes light work.

“Do you like recycling?” asked a girl.

“I love it,” I replied.

“Will we get to do this again?” asked a boy.

If you want to, we can, I say.

Thank you to all children and parents and carers who came along last Thursday after school and helped sort out boxes of ‘rubbish’ collected at the St Kilda Pride After Party, to help raise funds for a LGBTQIA + charity. We did a great job, and on Friday I carted what we sorted to a processing depot at Rowville, and the final tally: 1801 items. At 10c each, do the maths.

I’ll chip in a bit extra and will transfer $200 to Minus 18 next week, and will let them know the St Kilda Sports Club and children at SKiPPS helped with this donation.

As the children were busy separating all the aluminium from the straws and paper cups, I asked them if they’d ever done anything like this before.

They sang out in unison: NO!!!

Thank you also to Allison for helping make this happen. We gave the children a new experience. Tactile and mindful and informal and with others, an afterschool activity like no other, a shared experience, all of it with unstated learnings of how to tread on this planet of ours a little more lightly.

And if we do it again, I’d be so happy if Ava and others can join in again.

Also, please keep bringing in 10c container deposit scheme items to school, and I’ll rebrand the boxes to ‘Recycling for Good Stuff’, and if Allison and the children do the counting, I’ll process what the school collects. The children will decide each term where to donate this money. Every little bit helps. And it shows another little way of caring.

Dugald