Geraldine High School Sustainability Group 2023-2024

Winners!! The GHS Sustainability group has won the Bob Eatt Foundation Award of Excellence for creating a positive environmental impact within our school community.

This was across 2023 and this year.

It acknowledges the changes our students are trying to make to better our environment. It has included a rubbish audit, park clean-ups, beach clean-up, continual recycling that is being done, and the recycling themed week that was run last year.  We are due to do a Kennedy Park clean-up in Week 10 of this term.  Well done to the Sustainability team.

In 2023 a group of teachers started a sustainability group at our school. 15 students joined the committee which was great! The students came up with ideas about what they would like to achieve. The teachers did some behind-the-scenes research and organisation to support the students, but the students then turned their ideas into action and the end result was awesome as they:

●      did a litter audit at our school.

●      brought in recycling at our school - they wanted to make it manageable so worked with school leadership, cleaners and staff to focus on recycling for a start. We now have monitors that are set up in a position at school every morning, bins are taken to them by students from classrooms and the monitors ensure the right things go in the right bins.

●      did a beach cleanup at Browns Beach - not too far from Geraldine.

●      invited any students to help them with a clean up at our park next to the school. The sustainability group inspired others and there was a great turnout of all ages.

●      organised a recycling-themed week, the students used games to educate the school about what they can recycle.

This committee has just been brought back together for 2024 and word has got out and the numbers have increased. We now have 24 students - ranging from Year 8 through to Year 13. We have organised roles within the committee and now the students are working on what they would like to achieve this year.  Students have already been into a staff meeting and talked about what staff can be doing to support all students with their recycling.

Year 9 Science

To support what was going on the Science Department has brought in a new topic for 2024 which is linked to plastic (and litter in general) and what it does in our oceans. The students are:

●       reading student versions of scientific articles,

●      interpreting data,

●      collecting litter from our school and analysing it,

●      looking at how our litter could make it to the ocean from our school,

●      interviewing students at our school about litter, and then

●      presenting what they think could help solve our litter problem at the school. If there are workable ideas from this they may be trialed at our school.

The impact of what is being done

As you can see all of the above is having an impact on:

●      Students across the school

●      Staff

●      Our environment

●      Hopefully our wider school whanau as students go home and share what they have learnt. (This year we have a media team in the group so we can share more information).