Go Greener
Increasing Biodiversity at SCEGGS
The UN International Biodiversity Day was celebrated on Sunday May 22 with the slogan “Building a shared future for life”.
At SCEGGS we are looking at ways to improve the biodiversity on our school grounds. Over the holidays, the Juniper Pines were removed from the walkway leading to the mathematics staff room. In their place, Innes our gardener, has planted three varieties of flowering native plants to encourage small bird species and insects to visit the school.
The species chosen are:
Grevillea Moonlight is a beautiful hybrid tree growing large cream-coloured flowers all year round. The Moonlight Grevillea is a cross between Grevillea Banksii and Grevillea Whiteana. The nectar of the Grevillea flowers when mixed with water was a sweet drink for Indigenous peoples.
Hakea Salicifolia is a 3-5 metre tree with attractive foliage and creamy flowers. It was named after Baron Christian Ludwig von Hake who was a German patron of botany in the 18th century and the Latin words salix and folium meaning willow like leaves. This tree grows on the NSW coast.
Banksia Ericifolia is one of the most beautiful varieties of the Banksia growing between the Central coast of NSW and Jervis Bay. It has large yellow to reddish orange spikes and is perfect for attracting honey eating birds. Carl Linnaeus in 1872 named the Banksia species after Joseph Banks.
On another note, there has been in explosion of blue banded bees visiting the bush tucker garden on top of the Primary school. These are solitary native bees and have the unique characteristic of being able to shake their whole body to capture difficult to remove pollen from a flower. Unfortunately, they are too quick to get a photo!
Battery recycling at SCEGGS
In February, I mentioned that households could recycle batteries at the convenient drop off points in supermarkets and hardware stores thanks to the national bcycle scheme.
In the past we relied upon the generosity of members of staff to correctly dispose of any batteries collected in the school. SCEGGS has now formed a partnership with ECObatt to take away our batteries. Please take all used batteries to the labelled wheelie bin outside the IT Department.
Sue Zipfinger
Sustainability Co-ordinator
