Minimising waste at
Hartwell.
Reducing waste has always been a hot topic at Hartwell Primary School
and in 2011 has become a major focus for the Sustainability team, staff,
students and wider school community. Going into a new buildings and
purchasing new furniture meant that we had a lot of old furniture that
needed to be dealt with. Through help from the local community, Hartwell
has made great use of this old furniture and distributed it to under
privileged schools and to local charity organisations. Recycling furniture
and old uniforms has always been an aim for Hartwell in order to ensure
we are being sustainable and also helping the local community.
The Level 4 students have helped to create awareness on ways the school
community contributes to our waste production and have identified ways in
which we can reduce this. Through clever advertising and marketing the
students promoted rubbish free lunches and created signs to display in
classrooms that not only promoted recycling but also made students aware
of ways that they can help reduce the amount of waste they produce in
their classroom. The students are working on a proposal to School
Council for a rubbish free lunch, once a month, and if this is successful
increasing it to once a week. The proposal outlines that students aim to
reduce our rubbish collection from Prep to Grade 6 by 50%. The class
with the least amount of rubbish will be awarded a certain amount of points
which will go to their yearly total for the chance to win a class prize.
A team of Grade 5 students known as the Sustainability Action Team
complete a recycling run twice a week to empty all the recycling bins
around the school. The students thrive on the extra responsibility and take
their role as waste management helpers very seriously. To support
keeping the school clean and tidy a different class is assigned to clean up
duty around the school every week. The Sustainability team provides the
class on duty with a set of buckets and gloves to assist in their daily clean
up. Assigning a different class every week helps the student to understand
that we are all accountable for reducing rubbish and in order to minimize
the work we put in we need to ensure we recycle and distribute our rubbish
in the appropriate bins around the school.
Hartwell is heading in the right direction for reducing waste in the school
and is working hard to create awareness amongst the school community of
the importance of minimising waste. We are progressing slowly but as one
wise man once said “every journey must start with a single step.” Let’s
hope we have taking a step in the right direction.