Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Friday last week, I had the great pleasure of visiting Appin Primary School in my electorate to congratulate them on becoming an Eco-School and achieving bronze accreditation, which took seven months of collective hard work and dedication by all the staff and students at the school. Eco-Schools is a program for environmental management and certification designed to implement sustainable development education in schools by encouraging children to take an active role in how their school can be run for the benefit of the environment. It employs a holistic participatory approach combining learning and action, thus providing an effective method for improving the environments of schools and producing actual awareness raising and behavioural change in young people, school staff, families and communities.

Appin Primary School's remarkable achievements through this program speak for themselves. Energy use has been reduced by 24 per cent; total waste has been reduced by 25 per cent; and waste to landfill has been reduced by a staggering 86 per cent. In relation to that last point, paper and food are the main items being diverted to landfill by Appin Primary. Before the program, the school was sending 23.2 kilograms of paper to landfill per week and recycling 15 kilograms. This has now been reduced to two kilograms to landfill, while paper and card recycling has been increased to 29.8 kilograms per week. Appin Primary was sending 64.6 kilograms of food per week to landfill and not recycling or composting at all. Thanks to the school's achievements through the Eco-Schools program, this has been reduced to 8.1 kilograms of food being sent to landfill per week and the implementation of composting has resulted in 31 kilograms of food waste per week being diverted from landfill.

I congratulate all the students, staff and parents at Appin Primary School for taking part in the Eco-Schools program and proving that by working together it is possible to contribute positively to the environment. (Time expired)