Waste Wise at St Peter’s.
Over the past year, we at St Peter’s Primary School in Epping have begun our journey to becoming a
Resource Smart School. As a Catholic school, we are continually working towards ensuring that we
take action to be Stewards of God’s creation. This year our focus was on Waste. As a school
community, we have been trying to reduce our waste while undertaking actions to make change by
working towards completing the waste module of the Resource Smart program to provide us with
direction.
We have introduced many new initiatives that can help us achieve our goals. The first was our 4 new
types of bins. One for rubbish, one for organic waste, one for mixed recyclables and finally one for
paper recycling. By introducing these bins into every classroom our overall waste consumption has
decreased by 44%.
Through the use of our new bin policy we have successfully created and maintained 3 compost bins.
Each week a year level are assigned to mix the compost bins and Year 4s have taken on the
responsibility of “refreshing” the bins throughout the term. We have then used the compost mix on
the Year 2 veggie patch as well as around the school on gardens. By increasing our organic waste we
have been able to maintain a healthy compost.
St Peter’s have introduced wrapper free all week throughout the whole school in term 4. Students are
expected to either come completely wrapper free or take their rubbish home with them at the end of
the day as part of our carry in carry out policy. Students are also not to take any wrappers into the
yard to help reduce litter. This has also contributed to our waste consumption decrease.
Throughout the year St Peter’s has taken on many roles in the community to help decrease our
environmental footprint and raise awareness. In term 1, we decided to participate in “Clean up
Australia Day.” Students from all year levels walked around the school collecting rubbish during
their lunch time to make our school environmental clean. From that day, the environmental
committee came up with ways we can decrease our rubbish here at St Peter’s, wrapper free everyday
was one of them.
This year, St Peter’s has really taken to the “Kids Teaching Kids” program. Students from Year 5 and
6 have presented at other schools as well as the Resource Smart Awards, running composting and
recycling workshops. During Greenday, Year 4s took on the challenge to create and present to the
junior classes regarding topics such as; composting, sustainability and recycling. To make this day
successful students planned throughout literacy lessons and broke up into small groups to create
activities that were engaging and informative.
We are proud of our work on reducing our waste and look forward to seeing the results as we
continue to be Resource Smart.
Written by: Connor, Lauren and Kate (4KS)&Alessia and Bethany (6OO)
Composting
Kids Teaching Kids
Presentation at the Resource
Smart Awards.
Best Dressed Waste Hero on
Green Day.