Senior Project

It was recommended to me early on to create a 'Green Team' that would be dedicated to the pursuit of environmental causes at our school. I sought participants through word of mouth and by spruiking at the quarterly Big Picture town hall.

This aspect of the project proved quite challenging. Whilst I managed to garner a handful of members on the Google Classroom, I struggled to engage my peers with leading change in the same way I was.

This is okay, as I still managed to gain strong participation with some of the initiatives outlined below. However, attracting students to adopt leadership positions was unsuccessful.

As it turned out, it is quite challenging to organise a student team whilst oneself is a student. It would perhaps be wise for future student groups to look into having a staff member adopt the role of 'Sustainability Coordinator'.

Upon starting my project, it was recommended to me by my advisor, Kayte, to conduct an audit of the school's waste stream. This would allow for the identification of problems requiring solutions.

I begun this by investigating the waste channels at our school. I did so by mapping the bins around the school, and noting the waste type they are designated for. This allowed me to find that practically all of the school's bins are mixed waste, and are funnelled into a ~2000 litre landfill dumpster. I spoke to the main cleaner, Shane, to further understand this system and from him I learnt that it takes roughly a week to fill this dumpster, which is rather astonishing for a school of 300 students. Aside from the landfill waste stream, there also exists a few recycling bins in the library, Big Picture area and administration. According to Shane, this amounts to one wheelie bin, or 200 litres of approximate containerised volume per week. The weight of this would likely be substantially less than the landfill's, considering its composition of mainly paper and cardboard.

Now having learnt that a majority of the school's waste is sent to landfill, I was to audit this waste stream. I utilised online resources to plan this audit, which allowed me to develop a clear scaffold to follow. The steps proceeding the audit included: seeking permission from the principle, acquiring necessary materials and liaising with staff. Finally, I arranged with Shane for two days worth of waste to be set aside for us to audit.

The audit occurred in November of 2023 and involved a number of student participants. It took 8 gruelling hours of sifting through the rubbish to sort it into four categories: rubbish, recycling, organic and drink containers.

The key findings of the audit were:

• Approx' 5 wheelie bins or 1200 L of rubbish thrown away per week. (containerised volume, not measured by water displacement)

• Approx' 30.9 kg thrown away daily (rough average of two days worth)

• Approx' 4.940 tonnes thrown away annually

• Composition:

  • Rubbish: 37.9%

  • Recycling: 13.6%

  • Organic: 48.5%

<-- You can read my report of the audit here

The two most significant findings of the audit were

a) Half of our landfill-headed waste is compostable

b) We are discarding of $728 worth of drink containers annually

When school returned for 2024, I decided that a drink container recycling system was of priority. This was because:

a) Survey respondents showed strong interest in this issue

b) It had potential to generate funds for subsequent initiatives

Although this initiative was closely entwined with my senior project, I categorised it as my Social Action Project. You can read more about it here.

The other main initiative of my project aimed to remediate the second most startling finding of the audit: That 48.5% of our landfill waste stream is organic. The obvious solution would be to somehow redirect this organic waste to the garden where it could be composted. This would not only benefit the greater environment, but would be particularly beneficial to our permaculture garden as a core aspect of the permaculture model is to introduce nutrients and build up layers of healthy soil upon unhealthy soil.

Initially, I repurposed some plastic pails of mine into a compost. I sought more of these from a tradesman as they seemed like the best item to repurpose into collection bins. I utilised my 3D printer to create a piece that would allow one bucket to sit atop rather than inside of it - creating a levelled effect.

I begun utilising this compost for waste produce around the garden. However, after not too long, we outgrew it. It was then recommended to me that I should seek second-hand wheelie bins to convert into composts. The permaculture teacher and I acquired these wheelie bins from Remondis, a local bin company. They've since made great composts and have been a successful addition to the garden.

I begun the scrap-collection side of this initiative by repurposing a Fogo caddy into a 'Greentrepreneurs Compost Bin'. I set this bin in the Big Picture Kitchenette where it continues to reside. However, after several months, it has only managed to collect a banana peel and a tea bag. What might this be? My working theory was that it was too far away from where students actually eat their food. Whilst having a collection bin in the kitchenette was a nice idea and would've been convenient, it suffered from the same problem as the container collection bin that resides in the kitchenette.

Iterating on this, I repurposed one of the pails i'd collected as a food scraps collection bin and situated it in the canteen. This location was chosen as it is a high lunchtime-traffic area. However, after a week of experimenting with optimal positioning, it collected no more than a muesli bar wrapper, some hot chips and a plastic straw. This was until I checked on it one day and learnt that the canteen staff has adopted it into their kitchen. Since then, we have managed to re-direct approximately 1/6th of the schools' compostable waste to the permaculture garden where it is converted into nutrients and used to increase soil fertility.

There are some reasons why this initiative may not have the best chance of success in the long run:

a) The scraps were collected from the workings of the canteen kitchen rather than uneaten food of the students

b) It was reliant on three people, rather than the largest stakeholder group - students

c) One of these individuals (myself) has now left the school thus leaving the initiative teetering

Luckily, an amazing staff member has stepped up and said she would like to seek students to help continue the initiative for another term. Although I will not be physically present, I will answer queries via email and contribute however I can.

Still, the question remains as to how can we actively engage students in composting their own food waste, rather than that of the canteen kitchen's cooking processes? This would be the first step towards a whole-school sustainable waste management system that would involve the efforts of many rather than a few community members.

There are two major barriers to such an initiative:

1) Numerous sources of this waste from various stakeholders (students, staff, canteen, hospitality classroom) that require differing methods of collection

2) Liaisons would have to occur to somehow setup a sustainable system to direct this waste from various points in the school to the permaculture garden.

We have yet to work out how this can be achieved.