Sustainability in action

Stephanie Barwick

Year 9 

For our environmental issue, we selected to educate people about the importance of turning off appliances and minimising their usage where possible. This relates to the issue of anthropogenic climate change - climate change that is caused by humans and their actions. By overusing electric items, leaving them on for long periods of time or using less sustainable alternatives, we are releasing excess carbon into the atmosphere which creates an imbalance in elements and ecosystems, and pollutes the globe. 

Our initiative is to introduce an education campaign about the impact of overusing electricity at school and ay home. We have created posters, that will be displayed both in classrooms (paper posters) as well as on the TV's around school. We will also present to both middle and junior school classes during Home Group, and get then to participate in a Kahoot, to build their knowledge. Another thing we are going to do is publicise our ideas on the Teams/Compass pages. By doing this, we can make sure that both the school and wider community are educated, and we will have more people taking action, creating bigger effects and results. 

This is a solution that doesn’t require a lot of money or changes and are simple things everyone can do. However, things such as the idea of using TVs, and presenting to classes came from members of SRC and Sustainability club. By presenting there we gained feedback, and could refine our prototype to be more effective, something we are grateful for. 

In doing this project, I learned that everyone can do their part and help. It is little changes in habits that can help protect our environment, and they don’t need to be large or expensive. I also learnt more about how carbon is stored, to process of emissions, and more in depth about the carbon cycle/ its effect on ecosystems. When we do get back to school, we are planning on initiating these. We are hoping to do this by the end of the year, to create new initiatives and ways for next year, and new goals. However, we also have included information about how to do your part at home, which is attached.