Environmental initiatives

YSS Green Team

The P&C is proud to support the Yeronga State School Green Team, founded by school parent, Nicole Deayton, in partnership with the school administration leadership team. The Green Team is a comprised of grade 5 and 6 students who initiate and lead a range of initiatives at our school to shine the spotlight on action that can be taken at school to support the environment. Students wanting to be involved in the Green Team can apply at the end of year 4. The team is led by Environment Captains, who are Year 6 students selected by the school administration, along with the other school student leaders.

Green Team initiatives and successes include:

• 2019: winning the Clean Schools Award in the Brisbane City Council’s Cleaner Suburbs Awards.
• weekly meetings to brainstorm, plan and establish initiatives that will help to make our school more sustainable.
• annual ‘Clean up your school‘ days with every classroom taking part, supported by the Council Waste Management team providing litter pickers and bags for the students to use.
• Classroom paper recycling
• Nude Food Days promoted to the school community at least once a year, which has started to normalise the process of sending students’ food in reusable containers rather than single use packaging throughout the school.
  • ‘The Source Bulk foods’ donates generous class and individual prizes to encourage participation.
  • Students learn about how choosing unpackaged food can be better for the environment and healthier for them.
• Green Team assembly skits: Each week on our school assemblies, the Green Team entertains and educates students on the latest Green Team initiatives they can support around the school.
• A successful proposal to the P&C to introduce paper straws to our school Tuckshop to replace the plastic straws found littered throughout the school – paper straws can be composted in the school garden compost system.
• Cash for Cans – the school has had four bins delivered from the Big Red Shed for collecting the cans eligible for a refund, which has helped to reduce the amount of landfill waste at the school Fete and raise much needed funds for the school (including offsetting the cost of using more sustainable alternatives like paper straws at the tuckshop).
• Classroom composting – many classes collect their fruit and vegetable scraps during their Munch and Crunch break in their classroom, with the scraps taken to the school garden compost.
• Year 4 sustainability unit – in term 4, year 4 students complete a sustainability unit as part of the school curriculum.
• Litter Pickers and rubbish bags – Cr Nicole Johnston, our local Brisbane City Councillor, delivered 10 litter pickers and canvas bags to our school, to be regularly used to clean up our school grounds, making our school environment a cleaner and safer place for the wildlife that calls our school home.
• Sustainable 2019 School Fete – the Fete Committee accepted the Green Team’s proposal with eight suggestions to hold a greener Fete, including:
  • Plastic straw-free Fete
  • Balloon free fete
  • No plastic and polystyrene containers for food
  • Encourage BYO containers and give discounts for those who do
  • Compost food waste
  • Recycling bins
  • Container deposit scheme
  • Eco-skit to entertain and educate the school community.
• 2019 Fete Eco-stall – the Green Team held their own stall at the Fete where they sold reusable cups and straws, sold beeswax wraps, displayed composting information, sold second-hand uniforms and lost property containers.
• Battery recycling – in late 2018, we were visited by Battery Man from Battery World at Rocklea, who gave us a big purple wheelie bin to collect batteries in for recycling. This bin is kept in the ‘Recycling Hub’ in our school library. Each family received a mini version of the purple wheelie bin to collect batteries at home.
• Paperless school – over the past five years, our school has become almost completely paperless with newsletters, permission slips, flyers and paper that used to be printed and sent home now being accessed and responded to online.