coolbrisbane.org

Article by Linley Wilkie from The Melbourne Weekly Times

16 Sep, 2011

Last week, 52,000 Australian students participated in Enviroweek, raising money towards their school’s chosen environmental project.

The brainchild of Cool Australia chief executive Jason Kimberley, it was suggested kids release their inner environmental hero for the week in a variety of ways; planting a veggie patch at the school, bringing nude food (i.e. no packaging) or, as Kimberley did during last year’s Enviroweek, riding your bike everywhere. Wearing a green cape.

As silly as it may sound, it typifies Kimberley’s fun and energetic approach to educating children and encouraging them to tackle environmental concerns.

“If we can get the next generation to be leaving schools as solutionaries, who are aware of the challenges we face and make informed decisions through their lives, whether it be political or business, or what they’re buying in the supermarket, we’re in for a good future,” he says.

Click here to read the full article at The Melbourne Weekly online!

Enviroweek at Wollongong West Public School

"Some of the activities we did this week, and we are still doing are collecting plastic bags and learning about recycling.

Just in one week we were able to collect 401 bags! This was a real eye opener for the children.

We also did a waste audit to promote the topic of waste within the school. What interesting findings! We documented the details and pictures in this weeks newsletters and are hoping to start doing "nude food days" soon where we will not bring any waste to school. We found out that the waste on the playground ONLY... in one day was 13kg.

7KG of wet waste including food scraps and even food that had not even been opened like a sandwich and a sausage roll from the canteen. We were so amazed of how much people are wasting.

The rubbish in total made up of paper bags, plastic wrappers weighed 5kg in total. Much of this could of been recycled and instead it was put into the garbage bins will then go into landfill.

We have also planted some new vegetables this week. Including capsicum and passion fruit."