Environment – 7 March 2019

Hey everyone! With everyone settling into the new school year we have had some major successes and some big advancements regarding the waste usage in Australia and around our school as well. You may recall the plastic bag ban rolled through in the middle of last year, this had effectively cut down almost half of Australia’s consumption of plastic bags a fantastic feat! In response to the ban St Francis Xavier has changed the packaging of all items sold from the canteen. Switching from foam polystyrene to paper and cardboard. Small steps towards in the fight to reduce waste and pollution. 

We have changed our single use packaging suppliers to Biopak. They pride themselves on being a carbon neutral company that produces compostable and recyclable material to reduce the packaging they produce that will end up in landfill.

This leads onto to the establishment of the new coffee cup recycling program, SFX has partnered with Simply Cups to reduce the coffee cups heading straight to landfill. Did you know that coffee cups cannot be recycled conventionally as there is plastic lining in the insides of the cup? It is as simple as taking the lid off the cup and placing the coffee cup in the green tubes located in the canteen and the Library at Beaconsfield.

Simply Cups aims to close the loop on coffee cups entering landfill. Closing the loop means that the resources produced are not then discarded and can be reused for other purposes. Simply Cups uses the cardboard to produce reusable coffee cups and other plastic furniture.

 
Simply Cups statistics as of Dec 2018. (Taken from official Instagram page)

As We Grow Together as a school community in our own individual studies and pursuits it is also important to be mindful of the six R’s of sustainability:

Reduce, Refuse, Reuse, Rethink, Repair and Recycle

These are the fundamental basics of becoming a more environmentally friendly world. Small changes are easy and effective to make a bigger change to the environment without being an eco-warrior.

Please stay tuned regular updates from our group as we have lots of exciting and new projects happening in 2019.

Thanks

Izaiah Roch (Environment Captain)