Our Projects

SEED works on a broad range of projects across the PLC campus that affect the social, environmental and economic future of the school and broader community. These projects are divided between four comittees within our SEED team: Water, Waste, Energy, and Conservation. Sometimes these comittee's join forces in achieving projects that ultimately aim towards the same goal, to improve the school's environmental impact and awareness.

Meet our comittees and some of their projects below!

Conservation Comittee

We work towards aiding in the conservation of Australia's native environment within our school and broader community.

Project Successes:

Turtle hatching program: As part of the program to make the Paramatta river a thriving marine environment again, PLC SEED is taking part in maintaining the long-necked turtle populations. At the moment, long-necked turtles are under great threat due to the increased populations of foxes and use of automobiles. We have partnered with scientists from Western Sydney University to carry out a hatching program in our school’s turtle pond. We will help in the hatching of eggs collected from the area and then the relocation of the young turtles back to their waterways. We hope to be well involved in this process and to support the populations as they slowly recover.

Upcoming Projects:

50 in 5 Program - PLC Sydney had donated funds to sequence the genome of the woylie, a native endangered species. https://crowdfunding.sydney.edu.au/project/15030

The program includes conservation talks and activities for our high school students.

PLC Sydney Native Garden - A grant was submitted to Burwood Council in Dec 2018 to develop our own native garden at school. We are awaiting a response on this exciting opportunity. We understand that having a native garden in our school will be tremendously beneficial to the native wildlife and will encourage a greater biodivesity in our own school grounds!

Energy Comittee

We work towards the saving of Energy within our school. We would like to see increased use of renewables and awareness of the vast effects just leaving the light on in a room at lunch can have!

Project Successes:

Successes:

Solar my School Program -We have successfully encouraged and succeeded in being granted the great opportunity to install solar panels in our school by a free local council initiative! We are so excited to have solar panels now installed on the roof of thompson hall thanks to the solar my school program and hope this will reduce the demand the school has on electricity produced by fossil fuel industries. Despite this major step, we still understand our school is now yet running on 100% renewable energy so are still pushing for more improvements on our campuses.

Upcoming Projects:

5 million Trees - Did you know that every 10 per cent increase in tree canopy cover can reduce land surface temperatures by 1.13 °C? We're getting on board with greening our city, and reducing the need for climate control at the same time with the 5 million trees initiative.

Save the Power Program - As a council, the Energy Comitee is being extremely active in their surveying of classrooms during lunchtimes, recesses and during class. We are discovering that many classrooms continue to have their doors and windows open while still using climate controlling devices. Similarly, lights and electronics are being left on when rooms are vacant! We are now underway with a survey of measuring exactly how much energy we use with the help of specialised equipment in our science labs. We hope to get more of the specialise equipment to other parts of the school to get a more accurate representation of how much energy we as a school use. Alonside this, the Energy Comittee plan to create more awareness about these matters and educate staff and students alike on the great toll they are taking to the resources of our planet.

Water Comittee

We work towards making sure the use of water within our school's is under a sustainable and ecologically friendly practice. Water is such a vital resource to all living things, we must take greater care when handling it!

Project Successes:

Unfortunately much of our water conservation efforts have been postponed in the face of Covid-19 where extra and thorough cleaning and hygeine has have to been taken place. We hope to persue much of our projects in the upcoming years.

Upcoming Projects:

Clean Our Detergents Program

Chemical inorganic detergents are having major effects on our waterways as some most recent scientific studies have pointed out. Not only are many of them simply toxic to marine organisms, they are contributing to the occurence of toxic algae blooms which can lead to depletion of dissolved oxygen in waterways for marine organisms. The use of organic detergents and soaps in the replacement of chemical alternatives would be extremely beneficial in regards to the schools marine consciousness.

Waste Comittee

We work towards minimising the schools ecological impact in relation to the quantity of waste we produce. We run many annual watse audits to make sure we are on track.

Project Successes:

Paper recycling Program - We have successfully installed paper recycling bins to almost all classrooms in the school grounds. With the help of the SRC, we hope to upscale the initiative further with specialised teaching services about the direct movement of our paper to its appropriate recycling resources.

Greening Food waste - PLC Sydney has recently invested into a new food desicator. This is a machine that processes all of PLC's organic waste and will transform it into smaller chips. The SEED team is so happy with our schools purchase but there is still a lot of work to be done to make the desicator work to its full potential. First off, the waste committee is planning to run experiments in the use of these processed chips as an organic fertilizer for our gardens, what are the best methods of use? what are the best application rates? what is the substances water retention rates? For now, the processed chips are being used in the creation of biofuel.

Clean up Australia Day - In 2019 and 2021 saw our team running a clean up Australia Day event in our own community area. Students, Staff, Friends and Family were all invited to attent the fun day out in the sun removing waste from our local waterways and fantastic park areas. There was a great sense of community upon arrrival at the day and the team worked efficiently and well. We hope to make this an annual event for our PLC community.

Upcoming Projects:

Other Recycling Programs - PLC SEED Waste comittee is continuing its work on promoting our existing recycling programs for batteries and soft plastics in our staffrooms.

Keep Cup Initiative - The Waste committee is also planning the process of encouraging the use of Keep cups in our own cafe and kanteen. *unfortunately this initiative had to be delayed due to strict hygeine practices enforced during the Covid-19 restrictions.

...

If you have any suggestions about what we can improve within the PLC community, or interesting environmental projects happening around the world please email us at mariag@plc.nsw.edu.au

We'd love to hear from you!

Return and Earn Deport Excursion

On Tuesday 24 November a group of student from SEED went to a Return and Earn Deport at Lunch to recycle some of the schools used cans and glass bottles. We were able to earn $30 from all of the bottles we brought with us. We also found a beetle in one of the gardens, don't worry though we put them back into the garden. Here are some photos from our excursion:

Report abuse