No Time to Waste

Positive change in the community of our school with regards to improving our surroundings and environment e.g. addressing littering and lack of recycling and composting in the school, reducing water wastage, reducing the use of paper by staff and students, reducing food wastage in the Home-Economics room, and encouraging the recycling of clothes and materials.

Our Social Issue

Wastefulness in our school which is having a negative impact on our school, the environment and in turn the climate.

Why We Chose It

Our school is only new. We are only up to year 4 (TY). We are in prefabs. We are an IPad school. We have not achieved much in the school yet with regards to recycling, composting etc. We also felt that too much paper is used as an IPad school. Therefore, we felt the wastefulness that is evident around the school would be a good innovation to tackle. And a good starting point for such a new school.

Our Goal

Our big idea is to reduce wastefulness amongst our school community. Our goals are: - To encourage the recycling and reusing of clothes by running a ‘Cash for Clobber’ event each year. - To increase recycling and composting in the school. - To reduce the amount of water that is being wasted by taps being left on in the toilets. - To reduce the amount of food and plastic containers left behind in the home-ec room. - To reduce the amount of electricity that is being wasted around the school e.g. lights, heating and air conditioning. - Reduce the amount of paper being

Our Innovative Action

We have created awareness and reminder posters which have been put up in classrooms and the toilets. (e.g. reminders to turn off lights and AC/heating, reduce waste of water, etc.) We are creating a presentation for use in Wellbeing classes to create awareness of our innovation and research. We have made a large compost bin. We are in the process of reorganising the bins in the school so more recycling and composting takes place. We are creating a reminder poster for the teachers work room which a checklist of things to consider before printing large amounts. We ran a ‘Cash for Clobber’ event.

Our Impact

By getting our school community started on the right track. We were not recycling well at all, and now we have started. We now have a proper compost bin. We have more confidence now because of this process. We have created a positive relationship with ‘Cash for clobber’ and will now be able to organise this each year. This also impacted positively on our relationship with parents as they were very supportive bringing in clothes for our fundraiser.