2015 ResourceSmart Schools Awards

Last updated: 24 September 2024
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The 2015 ResourceSmart Education Awards ceremony was held on Wednesday 14 October at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, South Wharf.

Congratulations to Winters Flat Primary School, Castlemaine on being the esteemed ResourceSmart School of the Year 2015. Check out the amazing sustainability stories on our category winners and finalists in the 2015 Awards booklet and profiles below. Thank you to all our inspiring entrants.

The ResourceSmart Education Awards – Victoria’s largest sustainability awards program for schools and early childhood services – reward and recognise a huge range of imaginative and inspiring activities that have led to outstanding sustainability achievements for the Victorian community.

Logo showing the text "Imagine, Action, Inspire"

ResourceSmart School of the year

Winner: Winters Flat Primary School, Castlemaine

Winters Flat Primary School is an impressive and inspiring leader in education for a sustainable future. They embed sustainability into their curriculum and engage students, parents and the broader community.

The student led action team ‘Eco Kids - Community Leaders’, is a group of students from grades 3 to 6, who lead on events and activities to create a sustainable school.

Leaders attend conferences, workshops and community meetings to improve their understanding of environmental impacts while developing their presentation skills.

They conduct energy, litter and biodiversity audits and the results are published in the school newsletter. These results also guide program plans that motivate positive behaviour change to reduce carbon footprints at school and home.

Behaviour change activities include the school’s Nude Food everyday to reduce litter, and the ‘1, 2 or 3 layer days’ depending on the weather to reduce the energy needed to heat and cool classrooms. Students have to developed enormous pride in the beauty of the school grounds, it is a shared responsibility for all to keep the grounds litter free.

The biodiversity focus recognises how local habitat has been depleted due to urbanisation. By working with local elders, Landcare and friends groups, a group of students were inspired to create an indigenous garden to increase the wildlife habitat in the school grounds.

Over 100 students, parents and teachers participate in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden with links to food preparation. Students also work with Friends of Campbell’s Creek as a contribution to community spaces.

The Fridge Henge Art project - In Our Fridge Not a Bit is Wasted – was created with support from the Castlemaine Arts community. As part of the project students determined what items in the fridge included food miles. They reproduced items, using recycled craft materials and filling a disused fridge to illustrate their message. The project was well received creating interest at the festival and was a media favourite.

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Finalists

Newcomer of the year

Winner: Mountain District Christian School

Over the past 12 months, Mountain District Christian School have shown great initiative and made great progress in multiple areas of sustainability, particularly energy and biodiversity. They are determined to make sustainability part of every child’s learning experience at the school.

Mountain District have worked around challenges, such as costs for energy efficiency upgrades, to achieve great reductions in energy in the past year. They have decreased their use of non-renewable energy from 2014-15 by over 50 percent.

This was achieved via two major strategies: firstly by replacing all lighting on the property with low energy LED lights and secondly by increasing the use of solar energy from a 3 kilowatt to 23 kilowatt system.

Finalists

Early Childhood Service of the Year

Winner: Lorne Kindergarten

Lorne Kindergarten’s mission this year has seen the implementation of their Junior Earthlings Sustainability and Science Program. Junior Earthlings is an original, integrated sustainability and science program that fosters student awareness, engagement and delight in the natural world. The program’s core goal is to enhance children’s understanding that sustainability is more than simply being waste and water wise.

Through an innovative, measurable program that includes excursions, guest speakers and play-based learning, children are guided to an understanding of the environment and their impact upon it, within a framework of scientific and cultural enquiry.

Collaboration with educators, local businesses and families provides the opportunity to create a variety of sustainability programs. A new project as part of the program’s ongoing plan
is the River Creek Bed where children are encouraged through child directed play to recognise that natural science is profoundly connected to sustainability.

Finalists

Primary Teacher of the Year

Winner: Jeanette McMahon, Winters Flat Primary School, Castlemaine

Jeanette is a dedicated classroom teacher and the inspirational Sustainability Coordinator at Winters Flat Primary School. She exudes passion, dedication and determination in her pursuit to empower students, teachers and community to take positive steps towards building a sustainable world. She ensures staff are aligned, supported and equipped to teach sustainability through the themes of waste, water, biodiversity and energy.

Throughout the past year, Jeanette has been instrumental in Winters Flat becoming a 4 Star ResourceSmart School and engaging the entire school community in that journey.

Jeanette drives the Student Leadership program with various student groups to ensure that sustainable practices remain a focus for the students and a genuine way of life for the school.

Jeanette coordinates school and community sustainability events such as the Youth Leading the World Sustainability Conference and invites sustainability specialists to impassion the school.

Finalists

Secondary Teacher of the Year

Winner: Melbourne Girl’s College, Andrew Vance

Melbourne Girls’ College’s Sustainability Coordinator Andrew Vance sees his role as an opportunity to educate, encourage participation, and empower students to make a difference. Student led teams are guided by him to manage sustainability activities from ideas and planning through to implementation.

There are more than fifty students in the school’s sustainability team with Andrew working alongside both students and parents in a partnership that has produced award winning results.

Andrew instigated Melbourne Girls’ College’s annual Student Environment Conference, where over 100 students from local secondary schools workshop environmental issues and ideas.

His hard work and enthusiasm was recognised earlier this year when Melbourne Girls’ College were awarded the Zayed Future Energy Prize. The prize has enabled Andrew to embark
on construction of a range of renewable energy initiatives that will be used to educate students from around the State.

Finalists

Biodiversity Primary School of the Year

Winner: St Louis de Montfort’s Primary School, Aspendale

At St Louis de Montfort’s Primary School in Aspendale, maintaining the momentum to keep 750 students and 85 staff members engaged in sustainability is both challenging and rewarding. Staff support the development and implementation of biodiversity inquiry learning units into each year level.

Class groups visit the nearby Edithvale Wetlands to explore a real life example of a functioning ecosystem. These visits assisted in the management of the school’s ponds and wetland areas where students carried out water quality testing and observed that pumps would lift oxygen levels and regulate water temperature, while increased plantings would ensure filtration through the chains of ponds and waterways.

Acting on these findings has increased the variety of animals and macro invertebrates in the ponds and wetland areas.

Student Leaders promote biodiversity initiatives such as workshops and tours to inform the school community about sustainability. They engage younger students in workshops on worm farms, composting, aquaponics and ponding.

Finalists

Biodiversity Secondary School of the Year

Winner: Footscray City College

Footscray City College takes a holistic approach to biodiversity education by integrating it into the curriculum and prioritised as part of extracurricular activities. Students have been collaborating with the local community and council to improve biodiversity as well as a school recycling program.

The school’s initiatives include planting endemic species in the school grounds, establishing a biodiversity seedbank for seed collection, creating classroom gardens and building a worm farm. Senior students have landscaped the school grounds as part of their VCAL program by designing and creating garden seating, and doing mass plantings that are boosting the school’s biodiversity.

Over 170 students from Year 7 and 8 participated in the National Tree Planting Day in July. The students planted over 400 plants native to the Western Plains.

Passionate about ensuring continual environmental awareness, students created Footscray Environmental Society - a student run environmental group that assists staff to organise events and develop environmental programs for their school.

Finalists

Community Leadership Primary School of the Year

Winner: St Peter’s Primary School, Epping

St Peter’s is a school that consistently looks beyond the school fence and engages with the wider community to enhance outcomes for their students and community members. As part of this engagement students collaborated with Year 9 students from St Monica’s College to develop their school’s wetlands.

Their projects include:

  • Students from St Peter’s collaborated with Year 9s from St Monica’s College to develop their school’s wetlands.
  • All Year 1 and Year 5 students participated in Clean Up Australia Day.
  • Senior students developed and presented a workshop on water pollution at the Kids of the Yarra event.
  • They hosted five schools and four community organisations for ‘Green Day’ as part of Kids Teaching Kids.
  • They planted over 150 trees in a nearby reserve.
  • ‘Walk to School Days’ are held each term with one quarter of students and their families choosing to walk to school.
  • Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program sessions are run twice a week for year 3 and 4 students supported by 30 parents and two community members regularly volunteer to help in the garden.

Finalists

Community Leadership Secondary School of the Year

Winner: Footscray City College

Footscray City College was chosen as Australia’s participant in ‘Weather Stations’ – a global project based on the idea that writing and film gives people the ability to conceptualise scientific ideas such as climate change. Creating literary responses to climate change, year 9 students met with scientists and artists who provoked their thinking about how the world in the not-too-distant future may be radically different from the one we know, and how our lifestyles and behaviour influence this.

Students collaborated with Tipping Point Australia and indigenous author Tony Birch to produce significant creative writing and short documentary films on sustainability and climate change themes.

Growth in the students’ knowledge and awareness about climate change has dramatically increased motivation for action and change amongst the students. This has translated into more conversation about these topics with an undertaking by staff to focus curriculum content strongly on sustainability and increase student involvement in extracurricular activities.

Energy Primary School of the Year

Winner: Winters Flat Primary School, Castlemaine

Winters Flat’s energy efficiency initiatives created a culture shift across the entire school that is also influencing energy use in the family home. Reducing the schools carbon footprint is top of mind and deeply ingrained wasteful habits are being challenged in day-to-day operations, activity planning, special events and product purchasing. Staff and students stop and ask: 'Is this energy efficient? Can we do better?' The school has achieved reductions in energy use of almost 25% across the past two years.

The school council ratified a Heating/Cooling Regime and Events Policy and now the whole school sustainability curriculum plan and events calendar ensures that consistent messaging reaches staff and students. Specific energy initiatives include: class energy monitors, energy audits, solar panels and energy saving policies. Community leaders implemented a ‘1, 2 or 3 layers’ program, making weather announcements each day and school users are being asked to put on a jumper rather than the heater.

Energy Secondary School of the Year

Winner: Mountain District Christian School, Monbulk

Mountain District Christian School’s goal is to decrease use of non-renewable energy by at least 50 percent using a two-part strategy.

Firstly, lighting was retrofitted with low energy LEDs, which reduced lighting energy consumption by 60 percent, with an added benefit of improved quality of light. The project has an estimated five year payback period.

Secondly, they increased solar energy generation capacity from 3 kW to a 23 kW system with 80 Australian manufactured solar panels. This project was made possible by a Power Purchase
Agreement (PPA) with Planet Ark and Tindo Solar. The arrangement includes the installation and an agreement that gives the school a reduced rate for the energy they use for the next 15 years. During this time Tindo manage and maintain the panels and the school takes ownership at the completion of the contract.

Waste Primary School of the Year

Winner: Winters Flat Primary School, Castlemaine

The entire school community at Winters Flat has embraced and shared the responsibility of ongoing waste reduction. The project commenced with a simple message – don’t bring rubbish to school – and now Nude Food day happens every day for students.

The sustainability student team, or Community Leaders, run meetings and attend conferences such as Do more with Less, Youth Leading the World, GRIP leadership. They also promote
community events and activities such as battery exchange program, Little Green Wagon, World Environment Day and Recycling Week.

The Community Leaders conduct waste audits to ensure the correct bins are being used and provide input into the school sustainability calendar and newsletter. When the school was
below the ResourceSmart benchmark for waste to landfill, Leaders were motivated to introduce new initiatives and now they continue to monitor and record the results.

Finalists

Waste Secondary School of the Year

Winner: St Joseph’s College, Geelong

With the motto ‘targeting zero waste’ the College has invested extensive time developing infrastructure and practices that maximise waste reduction for all waste produced at the school.With a desire to showcase initiatives and share findings with the broader community and other schools, a promotional video and a school sustainability website were developed.

To induct new students into the efforts to ‘target zero waste’, sustainability leaders conduct waste and recycling presentations for incoming year 7 students in the first weeks of term one.

Cut the Wrap (CTW) days are conducted for Years 7, 8, 9 students. During CTW days, students are awarded a credit stamp upon presentation of a wrapping free lunch during homeroom.
Food incentives are offered as a reward for classes with 100 percent participation.

Finalists

Waste Primary School of the Year

Winner: Bentleigh West Primary School

As a 5 Star ResourceSmart School, Bentleigh West has achieved maximum water savings through harvesting, reducing, recycling and reusing initiatives. The past year has seen these achievements extended to their sister schools in Australia and Asia to create student awareness and actions addressing the plight of global water security.

Bentleigh West Primary‘s Global Water Cooperation Project involving four sister schools, was a Finalist in the education category of the 2015 United Nations World Environment Day Awards. Students collected, compared and analysed water data from sister schools in Jakarta, Bali, Dhaka and Balgo – a remote indigenous community in the Tanami Desert, Western Australia.

Students from Balgo visited Bentleigh West and participated in water education workshops. They produced a movie documenting their findings to share with students and educators from other schools across Australia. The documentary was used to launch the 2015 Kids Teaching Kids Week.

Finalists

Water Secondary School of the Year

Winner: Daylesford Secondary College

Daylesford Secondary College curriculum focuses on the appreciation of water as a precious commodity. In 2008 the school participated in the Water Exploration Think Tank (WETT) with a focus on water-based cross curricular activities in the school and feeder primary schools. This was followed by the establishment of a wetland that harvested storm water run-off
as well as the installation of three large rainwater tanks to harvest rain from the roof.

After joining the School Water Efficiency Program (SWEP) in 2014, water use in real time reporting alerted students to anomalous water use, even while the school was unattended. Year 7 and 8 students undertook a water audit to identify outlets that needed attention. The faulty devices and a major underground leak was discovered and repaired. In 2014, Daylesford Secondary also undertook the ResourceSmart Schools water module which revealed significant savings on their water bills.

Finalists

Primary Student-led Action Team of the Year

Winner: Ballarat Grammar Junior School – Mount Rowan Campus

After discovering three feral kittens, a group of year 4 students identified the need to establish a feral cat management program. Set on 120 acres at Mount Rowan, the program promotes
environmental advocacy under the philosophy of caring for life. Students researched feral kittens and how to care and tame them to enable homing. Fundraising was undertaken to feed the cats and to de-sex an adult cat. Students monitored local cat populations and designed posters to educate the school community.

The students not only raised awareness of this problem but also found homes for seven cats. Research showed that, on average, four kittens a litter are born every twelve weeks. With the kittens’ kittens contributing to the population over a seven year period, these students have prevented close to 2,900 cats causing devastation to the environment. This group of students are also active in planning sustainability activities and working with Landcare

Finalists

Secondary Student-led Action Team of the Year

Winner: Warracknabeal Secondary College

Warracknabeal’s Student Environmental Action Group was formed in February this year. It’s a dynamic group of volunteers with a vision to lead on sustainability in their school community. Their role includes educating and empowering students and staff to ‘speak up and switch off!’ (lights, projectors, speakers, heaters, taps).

Following a presentation from the ResourceSmart Schools facilitator, students were inspired and empowered to begin influencing behavioural change. It began with flicking off light switches in empty rooms, opening blinds and turning off speaker knobs on interactive whiteboards.

Undercover Litter Cops gave awards to students who were seen putting rubbish in the bin instead of on the ground.

The Group recently represented the school at the Grampians Wimmera Mallee (GWM) Water Conference in Horsham where they shared information on the health of the catchment, outlined the water treatment process and compared GWM facilities to those of a developing nation.

Finalists

2015 awards booklet

The ResourceSmart Education Awards are a great opportunity to boost school’s profile, network with other Victorian school’s that excel in sustainability, and celebrate with the community

Want to know more

Get in touch:

ResourceSmart Schools Awards, Sustainability Victoria
03 8626 8747
resourcesmartawards@sustainability.vic.gov.au