Climate Canons 

Sea Shepherd Marine Debris Clean Up

THE senior Climate Canons had the opportunity to work with Sea Shepherd Australia as part of their Marine Debris Campaign which promotes and facilitates coastal & river clean-ups.

Twelve students from Year Ten to Year Twelve spent Tuesday morning at Port Beach in Fremantle learning about the importance of recycling and waste management. After a brief induction by Karolina Strittmatter from Sea Shepherd the students put on gloves and headed to the beach to pick up rubbish and improve the marine environment.

During the debrief, Karolina sorted through the rubbish and highlighted that some of discarded food and coffee containers were labelled as environmentally friendly – less plastic and more paper. Although this is a positive change, it still doesn’t mean that we have the right to leave it behind in the marine environment.

The students involved should be proud of their efforts; 10kg of waste was removed from the beach with over 450 pieces of hard and soft plastic removed in one hour of work. Thanks to Mrs Robinson for driving the bus and Mrs Bunyan and Miss Firth for helping out with the excursion.

Earth Day

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. The Climate Canons hosted a Blooket quiz on Monday, 1 May to test students' skills on their knowledge of planet Earth and how to protect it. Congratulations to the following students who achieved the top scores in the quiz:

• Kornelia Okraj P6
• Harry Parkinson X6
• Mateo van Heerwaarden X5
• Phoenix Ishiguchi T7

The Willow Project

IT has been all over social media, including TikTok in recent months, and the Willow Project is causing much alarm around the world. All mining projects have pros and cons to them, and progress and opportunity are not to be ignored. However, this particular project appears to go against everything the global community to trying to do to reduce the impacts of climate change.

The Climate Canons hosted an information session at lunchtime on Wednesday, 10 May to inform students of the devastating impacts this project could have on not only Alaska, one of the world’s most pristine environments, but the whole world as it works towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  

The Willow Project - an oil drilling project by ConocoPhillips located in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska - has been approved by President Biden’s government, going against all the hard work the US has done reducing global emissions.

Environmentalist organisation Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on March 14, 2023, on behalf of conservation groups to stop the Willow Project, saying that the approval of a new carbon pollution source contradicts the President's promises to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and transition the US to clean energy.

The project could produce up to 750 million barrels of oil and 287 million tons of carbon emissions plus other greenhouse gases over 30 years, and could adversely impact Arctic wildlife and Native American communities. The Willow Project would damage the complex local tundra ecosystem and, according to an older government estimate, release the same amount of greenhouse gasses annually as half a million homes.

You can get involved in the conversation by making yourself aware of the details on the project. If you feel strongly for, or against the project, there are many places online where you can sign petitions to make your voice heard.

International Composting Awareness Week

SOME may think that this might be a strange topic for the Climate Canons to be covering but did you know over 7.3 million tonnes of food is wasted in Australia every year - which equates to nearly 300kg of food per person per year, with household food waste making up 2.5 million tonnes, or about 34% of the overall total amount of food wasted. 

Approximately 92% of household food waste still goes directly to landfill, where it anaerobically decomposes, expelling methane – a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

And this is the BIG reason why the Climate Canons this week got students involved in a Blooket quiz about food waste and hosted information sessions on how we can all do our bit to manage what waste goes to landfill. Clear bins were placed around the school to monitor how much food waste gets thrown out in just two days and it was a lot! The Climate Canons are looking at ways the College can reduce this waste going to landfill and potentially make a more positive impact by composting or recycling – watch this space!

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Miss D Pisconeri

(Climate Canons Coordinator)