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Sustainability

A BRIEF OVERVIEW: Staff, parents and students at KPS have begun to organise themselves to make our school more sustainable. Aussi Vic gave us a grant to become part of CERES for a one-year membership. A Sustainability Committee of staff and parents was formed late last year. We began to collect data about aspects of sustainability, such as our bills for electricity and water and the waste we generate. We will do comparisons later this year.

THE LATEST NEWS: We now have paper recycling/re-use bins in the classrooms, staffroom and offices. Soon food scraps will be recycled into compost. Our underground water tank was installed in December and toilets are now being flushed with water harvested from drain pipes! Also our Harmony Picnic on March 20^th, from 6pm, will be the first whole-school event to have a sustainability focus.

THE CHILDREN ARE INVOLVED: Last year every grade teacher collected ideas from the students as to how we could do better with sustainability in key areas such as water, energy, recycling and planting. Here are the ideas that they came up with.

GRADE PREP-ONE

·         Don’t use our precious drinking water for water fights

·         Take rubbish out of drains, use plugs in sinks, get half-flush toilets

·         Only drink the water that you need, don’t look away and talk while you are pressing on the tap handle. Put a sign near the taps: turn taps off. Ask people not to put dirty things in the taps. Don’t throw water on the concrete

·         Don’t throw rubbish in the drink troughs, make sure there is a container under your drink tap

·         Install automatic taps.

·         Turn off lights and fans when you are not using them, limit the use of computers. Use less power

·         Ride or walk to school and catch public transport

·         Get some chooks to lay eggs and eat our compost scraps

·         Put up blinds, curtains, paper, special stickers, material, etc, on windows to keep heat in or out

·         Think about whether we need the lights on during a bright sunny day

·         Wear a jacket instead of always turning on the heater

·         Pick up rubbish, clean up your area. Talk to other classes about the rubbish being dropped on the ground

·         Get rubbish bin lids with locks, provide cones as goal posts so the lids will not be used for this purpose

·         Don’t take rubbish out into the yard. Use tongs near the bin. Get a recycling bin

·         Have a wrapper-free lunch day

·         Get lunch boxes that have special compartments so we don’t have to wrap everything. Stop having too much rubbish from your lunch box

·         Stop using too much plastic

·         Sort the rubbish out, and put rubbish in the right bins. Don’t put food in the bin. Don’t put plastic bags in the sea

GRADE ONE-TWO

·         Different coloured  bins for different recycling

·         Make rubbish bin lids more secure

·         Put the scarecrows from Pam’s club next to the bins

·         Put scraps in the worm farm, have more compost

·         People should bring lunches without plastic and take their leftovers home

·         Increasingly frequent ‘rubbish-free lunch’ days

·         Use more recycled paper and less electricity

·         More containers to collect water

·         Have smaller water tanks behind the library

·         Have coloured and numbered  buckets under the taps in the drinking troughs

·         Cover squirting taps or get them fixed. Don’t use water on the sandpits and use it on the garden

·         Have automatic taps that turn themselves off. Don’t use water for the sand, dirt, tan-bark and other things

·         Make sure the water isn’t dripping

·         Install solar panels

·         Earth Hour: no electricity for an hour

·         Only have lights on when you need them, turn off fans, lights, computers and heaters when you don’t need them

·         Develop the worm farms, replant the vegie garden, use the vegetables for school cooking, after-care program or the canteen. We shouldn’t pull out the plants, don’t pull sticks and bark off trees

·         Grow more native plants for the wildlife (kangaroo paw, bottle brush and magnolia). Spend more money for the environment. Have more walk-to-school days and live near a school so you can walk.

·         Water the plants more, buy lots of seeds, get cow dung

·         More fund-raisers for water tanks and solar panels

GRADE THREE-FOUR

·         Take your rubbish home

·         Every week get three different monitors to pick up rubbish

·         More worm farms

·         Get three different bins

·         Have solar panels, put on only one set of lights in a room

·         Empty the tubs under the taps more often and put in more water tanks

·         Have compost bins in the classrooms

·         Print newsletters on recycle paper

·         Put some  bags back in the lunch boxes instead of in the bins

·         Have parents helping

·         Recycle all rubbish, such as paper and plastic.

·         Put recycling  bins in the yard as well as in the grades

·         Label the bins: paper, plastic, bottles, rubbish

·         Don’t bring plastic bags to school

·         Buy recycled paper wherever possible

·         Get automatic drink taps, capture the water, get a rain water tank for the gardens, fix leaky taps quickly and unblock sinks, use ice cream buckets under taps in more spots.

·         Try to use water twice, make all toilets dual flush, the boys’ urinal maybe flushes too often. Put a sprinkler on the oval using tank water

·         Get more plants and garden beds near the taps

·         Choose plants carefully that don’t need lots of water, native plants

·         Capture water and have pipes in good places, keep gutters clean and clear

·         Switch things off at the power points, not just on the appliance.

·         Think about whether we need lights on, and if you are not using it, switch it off. Have announcements before school ends to turn off all heaters, lights, and computers. Use energy-efficient light globes

·         Wear clothes for the forecast, fix gaps in doors and windows, put heaters on low, don’t leave the heater on and the door open, turn off the heater as the day warms up

·         Use blinds to help control the temperature

·         Get external blinds, then we don’t need air conditioners

·         Use paper wisely, have a plastic bag-free day, put food scraps in the compost, weigh the rubbish, lessen the rubbish. Use both sides of the paper

·         Ring the bell by hand to save the electricity

GRADE FIVE-SIX

·         Have automatic turn-off taps in the toilet, raise water awareness with the younger kids so they don’t waste it

·         Attach buckets to the taps, but somehow have them detachable to water the garden. Have a pipe that leads from the drinking fountains to the water tank

·         Put recycling bins and sorting bins in the playground

·         Have solar panels and lights. Turn off electrical appliances when not in use. Have life-long light bulbs and other green light bulbs

·         Use grey water for watering the garden

·         Choose drought-tolerant plants, plant more trees. Have drought-resistant grass on the oval. Have fake grass with cut-up tyre underlay

·         No littering, don’t waste paper

·         Have more walk/ride to school days

·         Have days when you are not allowed to bring rubbish