Soft Plastics Initiative

Hello everyone!

We are your Sustainability Captains, Laura and Mia. 

Most foods we buy and eat come in soft plastic packaging or other non-reusable 

materials. Every day around 8 million pieces of plastic make their way into our oceans and more than 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in our oceans every year.  A lot of the rubbish that ends up in our school bins is from food and drink packaging. 

At SJV, our goal is to reduce the amount of plastic we use and become a more environmentally friendly and sustainable school.  To help achieve this goal, we are introducing the soft plastics recycling initiative. This involves committing to collecting and recycling our soft plastic waste with REDcycle.

As of this week, two classes will share a ‘soft plastics bin’ and a ‘landfill bin’. Every class will still have their own ‘Visy (paper) bin’. Each separate bin will be clearly labelled. 

The soft plastic bins are for things like plastic bags, bubble wrap, cling wrap (with no food contamination), zip lock bags, lolly wrappers, chips and biscuit packaging (silver lined) etc. For a full list of what can be REDcycled, click here. 

Each week, the soft plastic will be collected from the classrooms. The plastic that we collect will be taken to the nearest REDcycle collection bin. These are located at participating Coles and Woolworths.  

Coming up, we are also thinking about doing a Nude Food Day. Nude foods are foods without plastic packaging. Nude Food reduces the amount of plastic that goes into our oceans and landfill. Reusable and durable containers are a greater and more sustainable way of packing our food to school. In the coming weeks, we will provide you with more information about this and a date will be confirmed. 

That is all the news from us. Thank you!

Laura and Mia

Sustainability Captains