At St Catherine’s, the Environment Club aims to improve the sustainability of our School and increase the School community’s awareness of the impact their lives have on the health of our environment.

As Environment Captain, in order to assist the School community in leading their most environmentally aware lives, each week at Assembly I provide a “Tip of the Week” to educate and provide easy habits to incorporate into their daily lives.

In the Environment Club, we develop strategies and initiatives to implement into the School routine that are both enjoyable and also beneficial. One of the regular strategies carried out throughout the school year is the composting of food scraps. We have multiple food scrap buckets placed around the School that are emptied at the end of every day into the two worm farms. In the past week, we have had to put a halt to the composting, as we have had such success with students composting their leftover food scraps.

The Environment Club is currently discussing acquiring more worm farms in order to ensure we can continue to collect as many food scraps as we can in the future. The aim of composting is to reduce the waste the School produces. It also creates rich soil we can use in our gardens, and vegetable plants, grown on campus. Additionally, it provides the students with a habit that they may consider implementing at home as well, which creates a more profound impact than just composting at School.

Friday 25 March was National Ride2School Day. The Environment Club promoted this Day to encourage our community to get outside before going to School, and realise how easy it can be to get to School without creating emissions from driving.

According to the National Ride2School’s website, for every kilometre you actively travel instead of driving, you save 243.8 grams of carbon emissions. What does that actually mean? On National Ride2School Day 2021, students across Australia saved 27 tonnes of CO2 by actively travelling to school – the equivalent of planting 187 trees, and that was only one day of the year – imagine if we did that every day. Over a year we would save 5,400 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of planting 37,800 trees! In the lead-up to this Day, our environment tip of the week was to dust off the bikes and scooters and get some practice in before the 25 March Ride to School Day.

The Day was a great success, as most students either used public transport to get themselves to School, or walked. Students said they were surprised how much faster it was getting to School via these methods, because of the lack of traffic they had to deal with!