Strathaird Primary School has worked very hard this year to reduce the amount of waste that ends up in our landfills through education and policy change.
Students have shown great passion when adopting more sustainable behaviour and have worked hard to send this message out to the school community.
In the area of waste we have:
· Through a hands-on approach, collected, weighed and calculated the amount, cost and types of waste that end up in our dumpster.
· Completed inquiry units of work promoting waste wise behaviour.
· Purchased three compost bins which are maintained by various classrooms.
· Purchased one worm farm.
· Become a collection site for prescription sunglasses, batteries and mobile phones for the community.
· Become a collection point for toner cartridges through Planet Arc.
· Participated in mobile muster and successfully collected enough phones to build 2 fence posts.
· Reduced our daily waste by 11kg on Rubbish Free Lunch day.
· Continued development of online newsletters and notices.
· Monitored cost and amount of waste sent to land fill through SETS.
· Adopted a Green Procurement Policy – Changed our school buying behaviour to ensure we source green products such as recycled paper. We now mostly use paper across the school that is 80% sugar cane fibre/20% plantation fibre.
· Organised ELFs (Environment Leaders of the future) – a group of dedicated students who meet weekly to come up with ideas to help our school become sustainable.
· Developed a successful system for keeping our school tidy and limiting rubbish around the school.
Furthermore we have committed to making additional positive changes in the future such as commencing a Waste Free Wednesday. We are also waiting to receive six Blue Recycling bins which will surely help us to further reduce our waste. We look forward to sharing more good news with you in the near future as we are sure we will come up with many more ways to become a great waste wise school!
