Enviro group, composting and recycling

The last two terms have been huge for the Enviro group. With help from some staff members, some departing Fortians (class of 2022) and some parents at Fort Fair, the students of the Enviro group have planted almost 200 local native trees on the school grounds. This is an enormous achievement.  A group of Year 9 students has been watering the new trees a few times a week, and the saplings have responded with spring shoots and flowers. The ongoing process of mulching and weeding will keep us busy as the term progresses.

At Fort Fair we inaugurated our new food waste composting system. A team of 20 composters from all year groups follows a strict roster to ensure that the central student compost bin is emptied into our new Aerobin composter and washed daily, and that the staff compost caddies are emptied and cleaned once a week. The canteen and school kitchens also use the central compost bins to keep methane-producing waste out of our landfill. The next challenge is to teach more of the student body the importance of making the effort to use this compost bin. Methane, produced by food waste when thrown into landfill bins, creates 26 times more carbon emissions than the carbon dioxide produced by composting it. Keeping food waste out of landfill is a vital way of reducing the school’s carbon footprint and protecting our climate.

Students will also have noticed the two new bottle and can recycling stations in the school. The containers collected under the Return and Earn program will be collected by the St Vincent de Paul Society and the proceeds will go to maintaining the school grounds. Huge thanks are due to Ms McMurray and Mr Prothero for organising these. Again, we warmly encourage students to make use of these containers, protecting our waterways from plastic waste and keeping the raw materials used to make these objects out of landfill.

Congratulations once again to the Enviro group for their sterling work.

Elizabeth Maddox

Environment Group Co-ordinator, 2022