Representatives from the Environmental Team attended the Northern Metropolitan Environmental Fair with Mrs Ericson and parent Peter Roberts on the 22^nd April this year.

The whole school participated in celebrating World Environment Day on the 5^th June by making flowers using recycled materials, writing a personal sustainability message on the flowers and planting (displaying them) across the front fence line. This event was also reported to the local community via an article in the local paper.

On July 23^rd the Environmental Tacklers, Mrs Ericson(Team Leader), Mrs Patterson (Our Principal) and parents Mr Roberts and Mrs Ray participated in a Community Tree Planting Event on a council reserve in Mill Park Lakes in preparation for our own school tree planting day.

The Environmental Tacklers once again led a very successful whole school tree planting day on July 26^th, where we planted 82 new plants in the school grounds. State Member for Mill Park Lily D’Ambrosio attended the event and was so impressed she donated funds towards purchasing plants for next year’s Tree Planting Day. Mrs Ericson, Mr Roberts, George and Peter Grenfell for Darebin River Management Committee assisted the team to teach grade groups how to plant trees and assist the younger students to do so. We use a ‘Kids teaching kids’ model to run this annual event.

In May we once again completed the documentation to become a Resource Smart School this allowed us to be eligible to apply for Resource Smart School Grants.

Mrs Ericson successfully applied for a $10,000 Energy Grant. As a condition of this application process Mark Smith from Planet Savers led the Environmental Tacklers to complete an Energy Audit in October .The team Members will prepare a presentation to report back to the school community on their findings. The school will use the balance of the grant to address the recommendations made in the resulting report.

As a Resource Smart requirement we purchased a subscription and joined the SETS – Schools Environment Tracking System, which will allow us to enter and store all our current and future data online. The advantage of this is that we can use it to perform the necessary calculations of our statistic requirements including such things as carbon emissions per student, school global footprint, energy savings etc. Data collection for waste costs, energy use and water consumption were updated and adjusted for 2013. Students in the Environmental Tacklers were responsible for entering the data into the SETS program online.

The school has continued with the recycling of paper via both the council collection and specific paper recycling.

The school entered a submission in the Resource Smart Community Involvement Awards for which we were shortlisted. Unfortunately the standard of applicants was very high this year and we were unsuccessful. However in the feedback given the selection committee particularly like the idea of our Koorie garden and the parent skills register.

As part of our continue grounds improvements George has erected a Gazebo between the oval and the basketball courts. Surrounding this, an indigenous Koorie garden was planted. Parent Peter Roberts also created a whimsical elf tree as well as imbedding palm tree off cuts in the ground to provide seating with natural textures.

The Foundation vegetable garden is regularly replanted and monitored by students overseen by parent Mr Peter Roberts. The water tank that was installed in 2009 with our Water Grant has collected water from the gym roof, and provided a free water source. It has ensured the survival of the plants, and the students have successfully grown and harvested a variety of vegetables and fruit. In addition Greg Patterson started another vegetable garden outside GP1 with grade 3 students.

The wrapper free lunch competition for all students that was introduced during 2008 (in an effort to reduce the amount of potential litter in the yard), has continued this year. A trophy has been presented at the school assembly each week, for the class with the greatest number of students whose lunches were wrapper free. To add an extra incentive the winning Junior and Senior class each week also receives an extra 15minutes lunch play taken at a time that suits the class teachers program.

In the past school house captains organised and ran the 2^nd life program across the whole school. This program relies on the collection of unwanted household goods to benefit Australian charities, local employment and to help clothe people in places such as Africa. This year due to time constraints we took part in the SAVERS reclamation project which involved our parent community donating their unwanted household items and clothes to be recycled and resold for reuse. These are sustainability projects with a real purpose!

We are now in the process of updating our Environment and Sustainability policy and other documentation to complete our core module, in order to receive accreditation as a Sustainable School in 2014.