The theme of this year’s Laudato Si’ Week is “From Hope to Action.” When they reflected on this, the Cedar Campus Student Leaders (Year 6 Captains) identified the most obvious environmental problem at our campus that we can take action to solve: litter in the yard! While it may be challenging to avoid packaging in the foods sent from home or bought from the canteen, the leaders knew they just had to help make sure everyone at Cedar Campus put this waste packaging in the bins. So they mobilised an army! We invited any interested Year 4 students to join “Green Patrol” for the week. The Green Patrol got to wear bright green lanyards and vests, and they stationed themselves at the doors to the yard and around the benches and rubbish bins outside before the start of each break. If students were going outside with food, they reminded them to make sure they are sitting down to eat. The same reminder was given to those leaving the canteen. The Green Patrol also awarded raffle tickets to any student who put rubbish in the bin. Would you believe it: for three days straight, we didn’t have a single piece of litter anywhere in the yard! (And only a couple of small pieces of litter towards the end of the week). After Laudato Si’ Week was finished, the Captains for Faith, Social Justice and the Environment found we had around 4,000 tickets! We had a raffle at assembly and awarded house points to 50 students, as well as prize packs to 24 more students. To remind students to Care for Creation, prize packs were nature-themed, such as fruit snacks and animal stickers.
Now that all of the students and staff have seen that we can keep the yard litter-free, let us hope that we keep it that way beyond the one week, and without needing raffles or prizes.
- Ms Mori Milholland