Warming-Waste-Water-Watts-Wildlife (W5) collaborative project of Alcoa Foundation and Eco-Schools bore new fruits in Australia as students formed an action team to combat waste at their school and spread the message across the community.
Students wanting to make a difference were selected from classes and formed a 12-member Eco-Action Team. These 12 students, ages 7 to 13, met on a weekly basis over the school term and worked together on gathering information, identifying issues and developing an action plan to solve them. As a result, a two-legged project for improving waste management was created. Students decided to assemble a composting station and they built a worm farm out of an old refrigerator as a way to reuse their unwanted waste.
“We learn by doing and exploring. This has been so much fun!”
Ryan and other students first mind-mapped how they would build the composting station, what items they would need and then identified and allocated tasks. With help of parents and teachers, they constructed the station on a cement foundation and transformed an old fridge into a worm station so they can later use the worm waste to fertilize the trees and use the worm castings for new seedings.
“They constantly say they have loved making a difference and they wish the Eco Wastebuster Action Team could work all day.”
The students did not stop at simply constructing the station, but they continue to meet and discuss the impact of their project and they keep maintaining it. The impact and reach of this project go beyond the Eco-Action Team as they share their knowledge and ideas with the Garden Club, also active at the Rockingham Beach Primary School, and together they educate others on how to make a difference at home by recycling and reusing food and garden scraps.
The students have even created an acrostic poem, titled Wastebusters, for their Eco Code and will be sharing it at their assembly item and through posters hanging around the school.
