EnviroNews
Pedal power, Energy and Resource Smart School Awards
Last week we heard that MGC is once again finalists in the Sustainability Victoria Resource Smart Schools Awards. This is a great achievement and shows that the lock downs didn’t stop our passion or commitment to sustainability throughout 2020-21! We are finalists in two categories: Curriculum Leadership and Teacher Leadership for our 2021 Waste awareness officer, Ms Paula McIntosh.
A group of lucky MGC Environment Team members will attend the award ceremony hosted by comedian Sammy J on Thursday 2nd of June at the MGC!
Earlier this term, Environment Captains Elsie and Zoe caught up with Lucy Dallimore to present her with her prize for being the 2022 “Most Powerful Pedaller award” from the pedal powered cinema.
Environment Vice Captain Sophie Hart is leading our biodiversity student team and is being assisted by the Australian Conservation Foundation to develop interpretive signage to educate about the cultural significance and ecological importance of the indigenous plants that we are re-establishing in the area.
Did you know that the Spiny Mat Rush (Lomandra longifolia), known as Karawan in the woi- wurrung language of the Wurundjeri people provides important ecological services to the local environment, including bank stabilization, shelter for invertebrates, lizards and small mammals and as a food source for grazing herbivores such as kangaroos? Culturally, the Karawan was traditionally used to weave baskets and Eel traps and if the leaves are grasped carefully near the base, can be pulled and chewed as a tasty snack for humans! Why not come down to the river bank one Saturday morning and learn more about life of the wonderful plants we have growing in our local environment!
Biodiversity work this month at MGC
The MGC Enviro Team was asked to host an Ecologically friendly BBQ for the athletics day. A tough ask, but we think we did a pretty good job. A team of dedicated students made batches of yummy veggie burgers to go with our eco-conscious menu. Staff worked hard to hunt down food that had zero packaging, which included buying meat sausages in bulk lots from the Queen Vic Market, a bulk order of bread rolls in giant bags and zero packaged lollies from the Hub Bulk and bare food store in Fairfield. We also hired the pedal powered smoothies from Bike N Blend and Ms Cardamone and her team washed and rewashed drink cups all day to ensure no disposable plastic cups or bottles were consumed!
We also thought about the full life cycle of the products we eat and we priced of BBQ items according to how much water it takes to produce. Roughly speaking, it takes just 100L of water to produce 1kg of vegetable, 1,000L of water to produce 1kg of kangaroo meat and a whopping 10,000L of water to produce 1kg of beef meat! Hence we encouraged our customers to consider the environmental impact of the food they eat and make wise decisions!
Finally, a new group has formed within the Student Environment team, known as the MGC Energy Savers. The Energy Savers will be working with Mr Vance to reduce our energy use, especially around heating classrooms. Did you know that even our super-efficient heaters, if left on overnight will use more energy than we consumed to run the entire pedal powered cinema and that for every degree lower we set the heaters, we save approximately 10% of energy? We think this is an important message to remind the community about and we encourage staff and students to rug up for winter and save energy. Perhaps you could jump on the pedal generators to warm up and feed some energy back into the grid While offsetting the heating bill this winter?!
Rethink, reduce, reuse and recycle
There is more to waste than what we throw away. We are looking to create a strategy that changes the way we look at waste and create a more sustainable Yarra.
Every year more than 80 billion tonnes of raw materials like metal, cardboard and plastics are consumed worldwide. That's set to double by 2060. Right now, only 9% of that raw material is reused and recycled. This is because our current waste system struggles to do much with our materials after it's thrown it away.
In line with our Council Plan and State Government policy, City of Yarra is working to reduce waste at each step, from design and purchasing to use and disposal creating a circular economy.
To support this transition, City of Yarra is developing Yarra’s Circular Economy Strategy 2022/30 and action plan that will guide our work on waste for the next 8 years.
Find out more and give your insights here: https://yoursayyarra.com.au/circulareconomy