It’s straight A’s for Mildura West Primary School which was named Waste Smart School of the Year for 2009 at an awards ceremony held recently at Federation Square in Melbourne.
Member for Northern Victoria Region, Candy Broad said the ResourceSmart School Awards celebrated the achievements of Victorian schools, students and teachers who sustainably managed their resources and encouraged local plant and animal diversity.
“The Brumby Labor Government is taking action to create a sustainable future for Victoria and one of the best ways is to educate students to become sustainable citizens,” Ms Broad said.
Mildura West Primary School gets top marks for delivering an overall reduction in paper use by 27%.
The waste disposal cost to the school has been reduced by 23%.
One initiative the school implemented was collecting enough milk bottles to make two tables and 25 plastic bench seats for the school grounds. Four of these were positioned at Rio Vista Park and one of the seats at the park was coloured pink to recognise and remember people with breast cancer.
Other ways that the school has reduced waste include:
- Teachers, students and parents using the electronic media for the intranet, newsletters, emailing and blogging.
- Year 5/6 Students engaging in organising Waste Wise events.
- Clean up Day at school is held on Friday’s and the local Park is also cleaned up.
- Parent working bees and the grounds contractor remove green waste to the landfill free of charge
- Compost bins and worm farms are used.
- Recycling is placed in commingled bins, a skip for plastics and cardboard, newspapers and magazines.
- Water Ambassadors monitor the gross pollution trap at Etiwanda Wetlands.
- Students teach students from other schools how to reduce their waste.
- In Science, students made more than 1500 biodegradable pots out of shredded newspaper to plant indigenous seeds and cuttings to replant in the school grounds and Rio Vista Park.
This year’s awards featured 131 entries from 87 primary and secondary schools in Victoria. The winning schools share a prize pool of money, gifts and travel worth more than $50,000.
Mildura West Primary School was also recognised at the ceremony for being one of the winners of the Rubbish Free Lunch Challenge Award. The challenge encourages students and teachers to be more sustainable with their lunch by doing such things as bringing food in containers instead of plastic wrap.