Congratulations on such a fantastic Yarra River Blitz!

Thanks to the members of the MGC student environment team who took part in the Yarra River Keeper’s litter blitz last Sunday.

Expertly coordinated by year 12 student Thalia Drossos- Spiteri, our team of Lucy Skelton, Veronique Villis, Natasha Enriquez, Samantha Kintanar and Julia Jessop paddled over 16km from MGC to the city and back, collecting floating rubbish the whole way. It was a tiring, but rewarding experience. The Yarra River Keepers posted the following report below.

Thanks to your help we were able to collect over 260kg of rubbish from our river and the surrounding area. It was great to see such a strong and environmentally conscious community coming together to make such a huge difference to the river. Especially with the recent weather, our efforts will have stopped significant amounts of litter from entering the waterway and causing harm to the flora and fauna.

In case you missed it, we were also featured on Channel 7 News on Sunday night HERE.

Our next blitz will be on the 25th of August (location TBC) so please watch our website and social media channels for updates.

MGC Waste News

Hello! As mentioned in previous newsletters, we’re trying really hard at MGC to reduce our waste to landfill but we can’t do it without the support of our parent community. Students are still bringing huge amounts of single use plastics into the school in their lunch boxes and school bags. Can we ask that parents support our desire to reduce waste by encouraging their daughter to pack a ‘nude food lunch box’. I know that in the morning rush this is difficult and for some families, including my own and some days it’s a relief and an achievement just to get out the door! With that said, the students at this school should be able to pack a nude food lunch box for themselves without too much parental overseeing.

Below are some recent images from the school canteen area. This represents only a small portion of the amount of waste this school is contributing to landfill on a daily basis. Last year our landfill bill alone was around $13,000. A lot of money literally going to waste!

I’m often shocked at what students leave behind after lunch and recess are over. Expensive water bottles and Tupperware containers, left on benches that if not collected will end up in landfill. Parents have a right to be annoyed by this lack of care and complacency, not to mention the total waste of your hard earned money.

We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need many more us doing our best and doing it imperfectly.

Small change tip: Change your browser. It takes one minute to switch your search engine to Ecosia (ecosia.org). Unlike Google, it uses the ad revenue from your searches to plant trees. Fifty million trees have already been planted.

Paula McIntosh on behalf of the Sustainability Team.

Solar update for World Environment Day!

Did you know that Melbourne Girls’ College is striving towards being a carbon neutral school by 2020?

Just in time for World Environment day, our solar array (the one that spells out MGC on the gym roof) has just got a bit more fancy! The on-line public monitoring system can now show your live data down to each individual panel, which means not only can we use the panels to track the movement of the Earth in the solar system, but it also means that each family who donated a panel to the system can now log in and get a report on how much energy their panel has produced!

For example, the Class of 2016 raised some funds to collectively donate a panel (It’s the one on the edge of the middle G). We can now view the energy generated, which was 374Wh on June 4th and 1.08MWh since it was installed. It’s currently working at 111 watts.

Once again, thank you to all our generous donors who have contributed to our carbon neutral goal.

The student environment team are currently working on which roof next to expand our solar array to. Please watch this space to find out how you can contribute to our carbon neutral goal. If you would like to be involved with Sustainability projects, the MGC Sustainability collective meets twice a term. The next meeting date is Wednesday 19th June at 6-7.30pm. We always welcome visitors and new members, staff parents, students and friends. For more information contact Andrew Vance: avance@mgc.vic.edu.au

Enphase monitoring link: https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/mobile/748374/today/graph/hours

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