Sustainability has been a focus at Monbulk Primary School for over a decade. They have been part of Resource Smart Schools since 2015 and are currently awaiting to be certified for their fifth sustainability star. They have achieved their stars by adjusting whole school behaviours and attitudes so students consider the environment in their everyday learning and play. Every year a Sustainability Captain is nominated and they form a Sustainability Team who work hard to promote sustainability in the school.
Elora is the Sustainability Captain for 2023.
“I wanted to be a Sustainability Captain because I wanted to help the world, especially with problems related to waste and plastic. Having less waste would lead to a cleaner healthier planet,” she said.
“This year so far we have worked on recertifying our Water Module. It has been really interesting to learn about how much water we waste and reports this back to the school.”
Tom, Halle, June and Winter are all part of the Sustainability Team.
“I wanted to be part of the Sustainability Team to help make our school and community a cleaner place with less rubbish. This year we learned about waste in the ocean, and learned that there was more rubbish in the ocean than fish,” Winter said.
“I wanted to be a part of the Sustainability team because I care about sea life and animals and wanted to make the environment better for them. This year I have helped implement Rubbish Free Friday which has been great to encourage people to but their rubbish in the bin and not around the school yard,” Tom said.
“I wanted to be part of the Sustainability Team because last year I did some research on pollution in the ocean and I thought it was sad all of these innocent animals were being harmed,” Halle said.
“My aim for this year is to help our school reduce the amount of rubbish we send to landfill. We are going to promote Rubbish Free Lunch more to make this happen.”
“I wanted to be a part of the Sustainability team because I wanted to do something that was going to help the environment and save the world,” June said.
“When we did a water audit we found lots of ways we could save more water at school which is something we can work on now.”