Natalie+De+Blasis

Year 9 Japanese St Leonards College: Sustainability

On Thursday the 18th of march, the class of year 9 Japanese visited St Leonards college to learn about sustainability. The college contains a number of environmentally freindly solutions to tackle things such as cooling, energy, rubbish and more. Some of the solutions they contained were...
 * Passive air conditioning: This is when the water runs through the walls, which are made of a cardboard, and cools down the area
 * Solar Panels
 * Wind Turbines: These create clean energy not only for the school, but also for the community
 * Water 'Bladder': This is like a big tank that is underneath the school, and fills up with storm water which they can then use for watering etc.
 * No Textbooks: All classrooms are virtual to save paper
 * Indiginous plants
 * Food Scraps left over from lunch and recess go to feeding the chickens
 * Community gardens
 * Own sheeps, cows and alpacas to tend to the grass
 * Bins: The school contains a number of different bins that help to recycle

St Leonards also contains a sustainability related curriculum. They have 'Sustainability Rings' which represent the five areas of sustainability. These rings include....
 * Enough for all forever
 * Personal (health, physical, mental)
 * Urban technology (things that will last)
 * Natural
 * and Social Culture

The school's seperate campus for school camps is also environmentally friendly. Overall, the school saves over 100,000 black balloons a year. It was a great experience that taught me a lot about the simple but effective things that we can do that will achieve an environmentally friendly future, and I beleive that St Leonards College is an example of what all schools should be like.

CERES Reflection

On the 3rd of June 2010 the year 9 Japanese class attended CERES, an enviornmental research facility. There I learn that...
 * Almost all products can be recycled such as timber, wood, food scraps, some plastics and more
 * If we don't try and decrease our use of resources now, in time our world will eventually run out of resources
 * Wood from new growth forests use almost 80% of the tree when logging, whilst old growth forest logging only uses 50% maximum of the tree
 * Methane is an extremely harmful to our planet
 * The smaller the home, the less resources we need to get from the earth

This experience helped me to understand how Japanese schools reduce, reuse and recycle. It especially helped me understand how Japanese schools recycle their rubbish and waste and what they do to make their environment more sustainable.

As a school, we could make our community more sustainable by...
 * Investing in water tanks that will help to water the gardens and flush the toilets
 * Introduce different bins for different wastes eg. food scraps, plastics, bottles etc.
 * Plant native trees in our environment to reduce the need to water
 * Invest in a wind turbine to supply clean energy to our school
 * Do simple things like turning off the lights and power after every class and every day at school

Japanese Student Interveiw

How do Japanese schools save electricity? Japanese students... - Clean Classrooms - Turn off lights - Pull out plugs - Use energy saving lights

How do Japanese students save water? - Turn off taps - Don't use too much water

How do Japanese schools recycle waste? - Re-use paper - Recycling bins

How are Japanese schools cleaned? - Clean the classrooms and toilets - Clean the corridors, every day for 10 minutes - Every Friday they wash and use towels - Clean blackboards

Natalie De Blasis