Cutting Food Waste at North Geelong Secondary College

At the Doing More with Less Roadshow, students from North Geelong Secondary discovered that 40% of waste in the City of Greater Geelong is food waste.  And they plan to do something about it, starting with the waste in food technology at their school. 

The food technology room now produces five bags of waste every day and the students plan to cut this down to one.  The teacher in the room, Ms Martin, is excited by the idea and has agreed to help out, and the school principal has also given the go ahead.

North Geelong plans to have two bins in food technology - one for waste and one for food scraps.  They also aim to build two small vegetable patches, and fill them with herbs which will be used for cooking.  This will cut down on purchasing herbs wrapped in plastic, reduce food miles, and the herbs will be organic - good for people and good for the planet.  A bakashi will be used to help break down scraps quickly and the liquid generated from it will be used on the herb garden, and other gardens around the school.

The students also plan to educate staff and students about waste, particularly food waste in the kitchen, so hopefully lots of people will start using these ideas at home as well.

Great plan North Geelong!  Good luck!

Tunas Reduces Waste to Landfill During Exchange

Tunas Hijau members, from Surabaya, Indonesia stayed in Perth for 8 days during the Doing More With Less Sustainability Roadshow in Mandurah. They visited the Alcoa Wormfarm and Composting Facility, monitored their waste in the accommodation they were staying in, ensuring they were recycling and putting all food waste in the wormfarm. As part of their monitoring they sorted all the recycling and learnt about what could be and what could not be recycled in the Town of Mosman Park. They used reusable shopping bags provided to reduce the number of bags they took home after each shopping trip. They stopped approx 4 kilos of food waste going to landfill by using the wormfarm provided.

Justin's Personal Project

Justin was really surprised to hear how much waste went to landfill in the City of Mandurah. During the lead up to the Waste Free Lunch Challenge Justin discussed his lunchbox contents with this mother. He looked at ways of managing waste in his home. He discussed his ideas with the MK Team and the waste experts at the Doing More With Less Project  in Mandurah. He was so keen to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill he was presented with an MK Waste Award. In the coming weeks Justin will receive a wormfarm so he can set it up in his wormfarm at home and reduce the organic waste going into his bin.

Sarah Fordham from Alcoa of Australia was very impressed with his project idea and agreed to visit him at his school to present him with this special award.

Tunas Hijau Agrees on their Doing More With Less Project

After 8 days of their Doing More With Less Cultural Exchange the Tunas Hijau team have made a plan for their school projects and their personal waste challenge when they return to Java, Indonesia. The students visited Alcoa Wormfarms, met with the Centre for Water Research, University of Western Australia, helped Cottesloe Primary School set up an MK Chapter, met with CEO of City of South Perth,  joined MK on a tour of the Avon River and learnt how to manage recycling, composting and a worm farming in an Australian household during their visit.

The students will continue their work on the Brandis River, Java on their return and help educate local schools about composting and wormfarms. They will put in 1000 Biopori holes to increase water retention in the soil which encourages worms. They will promote these projects in 3 Junior High School, Surabaya, 26 Junior High School, Surabaya.

During their exchange the students were really interested to find that some plastic is not recycled in Perth. They helped separate the plastic they purchased during their stay. They looked for the recycle sign and saw the different numbers on the bottles. They will research which plastics are recycled in their city.

Cha - Cha and Fadila have set a personal goal to compost, recycle and reduce non recyclable plastic in their houses.

Taza, Hilmy and Jibran will attempt to reduce the amount of plastic they purchase.


On the last day of their visit the students reported to the Indonesian Consul General in Perth, Western Australia.

Tunas Hijau Go Plastic Free Shopping

The Tunas Hijau team, from Surabaya, Indonesia, were given one hour to buy lunch for the 35 participants at the Doing More With Less Sustainability Roadshow in Mandurah. Armed with a list of food to be purchased the students scoured the shops in the Mandurah shopping centre for items to go in the waste free lunch. Bread rolls, ham, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes, relish, capsicum, fruit went down a treat back at the Bortolo Pavilion where the team were given a huge round of applause for the efforts. Only one plastic item which the Deli girl put the ham in before they had time to reject it!

The challenge was set the day before because the students collected all the waste from the first day's lunch and decided they could reduce their waste by thinking about reducing the waste as they were purchasing items at the shop.

Justin's Idea - Recycling, education and chocolate!

Justin from Riverside had so many great ideas to contribute at the Roadshow in Mandurah and the very next day sent us a message with more ideas!  Here's what he wrote.

"Its justin rox from RSPS, i have an idea we could fundraise and use a box of chocolates to make money for recycling , a gold coin donation for each chocolate, and tell them whats been happening and about the landfill sites, informing them to put the right things in the yellow lided bin's and hopfully educate them to recyle properly by giving them the information on a sheet of re-cycled paper with there chocolate.  
 
From Justin"

Learning about Alcoa Wormfarms

Students from Dawesville Catholic Primary School and Tunas Hijau Indonesia visited the Alcoa Wormfarm and Composting site at Pinjarra on Day One of the Mandurah Doing More With Less Sustainability Roadshow. Scott, from Alcoa showed the students the process of collecting the food waste from the canteens, through the sorting process, composting and wormfarms set ups. Students photographed the whole process and found out how much waste was collected and composted in this way, saving Alcoa a whole lot of waste that would have otherwise ended up in their landfill site. Scott showed the students things that are put in the waste collection sites at Alcoa - some can be recycled, some can be composted and put in the worm farm and some  things go straight to landfill. The kids had a great chat to Scott about making behavior gains through education. The kids plan to create projects at their school and plan to share their challenges and solutions with Scott. Schools in the Doing More With Less program will have an opportunity to visit the site with their class after the Roadshow to lean more about the wormfarm and composting process.