This year, the students and staff at Caulfield South Primary school have been working on renewing our Waste Module.

Lead by our environmentalist activist group, ‘The Green Machine’, we have undertaken a number of tasks including running waste and litter audits of the school, creating a new action plan to move ever closer to zero waste to landfill, implementing additional waste streams such as Soft Plastics, improving composting systems and working with the school community to reduce our waste to landfill.

Some of our major achievements have included running a zero waste Father’s Day stall where our students could purchase locally sourced and sustainably made gifts and a Father’s Day breakfast where parents and family members brought their own cups for coffee and used reusable cutlery and crockery. One of our Year 6 students Abby noted that ‘at the end, we only had a small container of landfill and the rest of our waste was composted’ – no mean feat for a school even which once had wrappers and packets galore! The PA have now set up own rentable kit which contains reusable items which will be available for rent for future fundraisers and celebrations.

We are delighted that our actions are having such a positive effect not only on our students but on our community with families joining our local ‘Love Our Streets’ group, learning from their children to segregate waste and reduce consumption regularly engaging in clean up events.

We have shared our successes in the Glen Eira newspaper and look forward to working with and encouraging other schools to follow our lead in reducing our waste and embedding sustainability across the school, curriculum and community.

Image shows students and staff celebrating the success of the Zero Waste Father’s Day Stall.