Staff and students at Athol Road P.S began their journey to reducing energy use in the school this year in conjunction with the energy module. 12 months on we start to see the savings and the positive actions of the whole school community…

In November 2013, a group of students were picked to perform an energy audit with the guidance of a company called Planet Savers. We looked at lighting, heating and cooling items and educational tools such as whiteboards. Our findings showed that we had very dated technology which were lighting up our school such as fluorescent tube lighting and carpark floodlights that were halogen and even halogen down lights in the office.

Also, we discovered that lights were on even though they were not being used and lights that were on even though it was a perfectly sunny day. Interactive white boards that were on when not being used and the same could be applied to heating and cooling.

From our findings, we were given a $10,000 grant. We used our money to replace fluorescent tube lighting in old buildings to LED lighting and carpark floodlights to LED floodlights.

This year, we had elected a skilled group of environmental leaders such as garden gurus, wetland warriors, waste watchers, animal army and water and energy watchers. Our responsibilities as the water and energy watchers was to regularly audit the energy being used in our school during recess and lunch when these buildings were empty.

With those findings, we presented them during assembly and showed the school how we could improve on our energy consumption such as turning off lights when we weren’t using them.

The elected leaders weren’t the only one trying to improve our energy usage, during environmental studies; students were given a passion project based on the environment. The theme was to research and with that research attempt to make a change to the school.
We had students who did projects about energy, mailing energy companies to give us a solar panel grant if we were to support their company in return and students giving letters to the principal to see how we may improve our school.

The results were very beneficial; our school had reduced our energy consumption by a great amount which reduced our energy bills which that money could go towards our education.

By Henry Fung and Martin Sta Romana- Year 6 Students