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Embodying a strong sense of social justice, students at Loreto College have launched a successful campaign to protect their local landscape.

Students at Loreto College are turning rubbish into reward thanks to a new campaign that is cleaning up the college while caring for the local environment.

Earlier this year, Loreto College joined forces with the Detmold Group, innovators in sustainable paper and board packaging solutions, to come up with a plan to implement the first plastic-free sustainable school community. The result was Cut the Rubbish, an initiative aimed not just at reducing waste on campus but also encouraging students to devise new ways of thinking to protect their local landscape.

“We’re very fortunate as a school only five minutes from the city that we have koalas using the creek that runs through our school.” Loreto College principal Dr

Nicole Archard says. “Our girls are very social justice oriented and they care about the environment, but as a school we felt we could be doing a lot more regarding our environmental impact.

“We showed the girls data of how much we rubbish we produce as a school and set ourselves targets as to what we could do about that. We focus on educating that it’s not just about reusing and recycling: it’s actually about reduction of rubbish.”

The campaign saw the removal of the school’s old bins which were replaced with segregated coloured bins. Environment committees were formed across the junior and senior schools, giving students the responsibility to educate their peers around the segregation of rubbish and putting the right rubbish into the right bin.

“We set a target of coming back after one term to see what impact we had made,” Dr Archard says. “In the middle we had coronavirus so we came back at the end of last term and found in the first six months we had reduced our waste not going to landfill by 30 per cent, while our overall landfill reduction had gone down by about 15 per cent. But we can do a lot better than that.”

New initiatives coming from the campaign include introducing compostable packaging to ensure food items could go in the compost bin.

“The girls have been really creative around that campaign – they have created online videos to educate the other students about the issue,” Dr Archard says.

“Litter around the school has reduced as well. Ultimately the girls have to be responsible for their own behaviour and are more likely to respond from their peers than a teacher saying, ‘Put your rubbish in the right bin’.

“It also inspires girls to come up with other initiatives. One student from Year 8 has met with the business manager to discuss an initiative about buying furniture made from recycled plastic. So it’s changing their thinking across the whole school, giving them a voice, inspiring their passion and showing they can be leaders.

Having Loreto alumni on board to inspire the students has been an added bonus.

“We were very fortunate to team up with the Detmold Group to do that,” Dr Archard says.

“The Detmold women are ex-Loreto scholars so it was really great role modelling for our girls regarding how they can make a difference to the world and be future women leaders.

Part of our mission is to make sure we are producing future women who act with justice, and this is a great arm of that program for them.”

“The program also inspires girls to come up with other initiatives. One student from Year 8 has met with the business manager to discuss an initiative about buying furniture made from recycled plastic. So it’s changing their thinking across the whole school, giving them a voice, inspiring their passion and showing they can be leaders”

Source: News Ltd.
Written by Lynn Cameron
Photos by Mike Burton