Earlier this month we celebrated Outdoor Classroom Day. On this day, a team of Year 5 students volunteered to participate in the Project 2020 Waste Management and Environmental Program (facilitated by Australian Government, Glowing Green Australia and Sustainable Schools Network).
The program inspired and empowered our students to be agents of change, by measuring, collating data and assessing how much waste impacts our natural environment, conducting the first waste audit in our school. Students were educated about the impacts of waste pollution, focusing on plastics and the importance of correct waste management and recycling. In collaboration with several other Gold Coast schools we collected more than 35kg of waste from our local area. This may not sound like a lot of waste, but 35kg of small plastic tear off pieces is a huge amount of collected rubbish.
Our students identified that almost 97% of the waste collected in our school was plastic tear offs (such as the corner of a muesli bar or ice block packaging) and from this data they are devising a plan of how we can reduce this type of preventable waste in the future.
On Saturday 21 November, our Project 2020 participants were formally recognised as ‘Glowing Green Crusaders’ by state and federal government leaders for their outstanding efforts in preserving the local environment.
Congratulations to… Atharva Nalawadi, Tadhg Allen, Christina Chen, Hayley Lugton, Ava Dobson, Sam Pikunic, Nikki de Weerd, Chase Kennett and Sabien Darrington from 5B and 5G.
