Sustainability - News from our Captains! 

Dear Students, Parents, Teachers and the whole school community, 

I, Charlotte Worona am delighted to talk about our Sustainability ideas and our progress through 2023, but before I start let me introduce the students who I work with to create such a great sustainability team in the school, alongside myself I am working with Amineh Araujo Rodriguez and Kim Pillig. 

Over this year we have all worked very closely trying to create and do such sustainable ideas, so then we can make our school much more sustainable and eco-friendlier. At the start of the year, we implemented “Lights-off hour,” even though it was going great at the start, we would like if the teachers continue to follow this, and we would also like if the students could remind the teachers of this, having your lights off doesn’t just mean you have to have them off period 5 every day, but also having them off more frequently throughout the day is just something small that we could do to be more sustainable. 

Even though all three of us, work very closely together on sustainability, as we are all passionate about such a good topic and issue, we also work on our own ideas, as we believe that if we are doing something each individually more can get done.  

Hopefully, over the next few months, you will all see changes, whether it’s with a community garden or new bins and bin liners. With less than half of 2023 left, we hope that we can finish all these by they end of the year, so we can start next year with brand new ideas.  

We understand that nobody likes opening the bins that we currently have, resulting in numerous pieces of rubbish scattered around the school, so getting new bins hopefully would help this issue. We have done lots of research on this topic and we have come to the conclusion that we would get the push (swing) lid bins and we would also have recycling bins located around the school (mainly in the Library and VCE centre), as well as we are planning on putting composting bins in the food tech rooms.

Not only do we want to get new bins throughout Wheelers Hill Secondary College, but we are also planning to get biodegradable bin liners for all the bins inside the classrooms and well as outside. This is to help reduce the plastics around the school, and to help us promote sustainable practices in the school environment. 

Sustainability is all about getting new bins though, we are also thinking of creating a sustainable garden in A block, not only with this create some colour in our school, but it can also greatly enhance learning experiences, with many science (biology) classes learning about plants features and processes.  

It great to know as Sustainability leaders that the new things that we can implement, not only we help with the school environment, but also it would benefit both the teachers and the students. 

Sincerely, 

Charlotte Worona, on behalf on the Sustainability team