Our Water Learning Story

St Mary’s School, Echuca 2022

Our Water Module is the 4th out of 5 Stars now completed in the ResourceSmart Sustainability Journey. The Water Module opened our eyes to many little tweaks taken on this year which have had a significant impact in regards to water conservation and awareness at St Mary’s as well as financial improvement. Comparing water bills from August 2021 to August 2022 we have decreased our water usage by over 20 percent. We have also put things in place to reduce the risk of abnormalities including leak tests, rain sensors and a water data logger.

Last year we kick started our Water Module by simply creating water saving signs throughout the school and we promoted water conservation in our Newsletter. Also during our Biodiversity Module last year we planted over 200 local, drought tolerant plants and grasses to suit our environment and climate conditions. This complemented the composting and mulching systems we already had in place to reduce water loss through evaporation in our garden beds. We also continued to make use of our water tank for redistribution of rainwater for our chooks, guinea pigs and vegetable gardens.

This year however, we have taken water conservation to a whole new level! This has been heavily guided by both the ResourceSmart Program and Coliban Water. Earlier in the year, our Green Team completed a Whole School Water Audit and toilet leak test with Coliban Water’s Educator Alice Rowbottom. Not only did this raise our awareness of our water usage, it began our quest in developing ways we could conserve water. Our students were amazed to discover that if food dye is placed into the toilet’s cistern and the dye flows through to the toilet bowl without flushing, we have a leak!

By completing this test at school we discovered we definitely had some leaking toilets. The Green Team reported these findings to Lee, our Maintenance Man where a plumber was then called. The Green Team also reported these findings in the Newsletter, at Assembly and conducted their own leak tests at home. Our newsletter article was entered into the SWEP (School Water Efficiency Program) Scholarship Competition where we won three years of data logging free of charge. This is where data loggers are placed on school water meters to record usage data, hence helping to improve water efficiency by identifying high water usage and leaks. The loggers continuously record water use and provide access to an interactive web portal.

We have entered our water bills into the RSS Portal so we can monitor our access, highlighting areas where our usage may have been abnormally high. With the use of SWEP’s water data logger this will now assist in raising our awareness much quicker to a leak or a pump malfunction, hence reducing bill abnormalities. We aim to reduce our water usage and bills even further in 2023.

This year there has been authentic, immersive, hands-on learning opportunities in our water education program including Incursions from Coliban Water. RSS encourages our students to become invested in our RSS journey by ensuring our Curriculum complements Sustainability. Some examples as such are Year 2’s Inquiry ‘Weather’ where they observed changes that occurred in the sky, including clouds and how seasonal changes affect everyday life. They also learnt with Coliban Water how the Indigenous accessed the Murray River hundreds of years ago and made comparisons to how it is used today in their inquiry

‘Then and Now.’

The installation of rain sensors has proven to be a great method to conserve our water. The rain sensors are connected to our sprinkler systems that are set for night watering. If the rain sensor detects a certain level of rain, it automatically switches off the sprinkler system. We have identified and fixed leaky taps and fittings in buildings or in the school grounds. We have also installed tap timers and auto shut off taps, including the replacement of 10 new auto shut off taps in the Junior toilets.

Through the use of our water audit St Mary’s created a Water Conservation Annual Action Plan articulating our water related goals until the end of this year. We also now have a Green Events Policy that outlines how we can make school and community events even more water wise. Again these small tweaks will have a significant environmental impact and send an important message out to our community that we are conscious we need to change to make change.

Completing the ResourceSmart School’s Water Module has been eye opening in the many ways we can and will continue to conserve our water and save money. We now look forward to completing our fifth and final module this term - ENERGY, where we will then become a Five Star ResourceSmart Leading School.

Thankyou Bunnings!

A huge thankyou to Bunnings for their very generous donation of seedlings and potting mix at the end of last term. We’re sure lots of Dads, Grandads or special friends enjoyed receiving their potted coffee cup Father’s Day weekend!

Golden Bins Award

Congratulations to Year 5CCA for winning the Golden Bins Award at the last Whole School Assembly. The class won by staying on top of their waste management and being of service by emptying other full bins within their area without being asked.

This term we are going to extend our Golden Bins Award to conserving our energy use. From next week all classrooms will have Green Team members completing random energy ‘sweeps’ at Recess and Lunch. The most efficient class who remembers to turn off their lights and heaters when not using the room will be acknowledged at our next Assembly. The Green Team will also be checking heaters are on the recommended energy saving 20 degrees when in use.

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