"History in the making."
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While on playground duty three years ago, Cudgegong Valley Public School educator, Rebecca Daniell was inspired to find a way to reduce the school's waste, and ever since, her initiative has continued to pave the way for others.
On February 23, Cudgegong Valley Public School welcomed 22 new Eco Team leaders from years three to six for semester one duties.
"About three years ago I was doing playground duty and noticed the amount of rubbish that was in our playground and what children were bringing to school in their lunchboxes," Rebecca said.
"I decided, in the class that I had at the time, to see if we could bring less rubbish. Thanks to the support of the parents, we started to bring less rubbish to school.
"A few other classes joined us, it was a roll-on affect to get it to where it is today."
Over the years, the school's waste has seen a dramatic decline, with this year witness to a 'record breaking' lack of waste on the grounds.
"A few years ago we started doing incentives and one of them was to reward the kids that bring zero rubbish to school, we call them our 'zero heroes'. Last week, we actually had more 'zero heroes' than we had rubbish," Ms Daniell said.
"With over 500 children in our school, we had under 400 pieces of rubbish and nearly 400 'zero heroes'.
"The Eco Team has been reducing waste in our school each day by recycling, we're working with the Council to recycle our rubbish."
Having been in operation for quite some time, the Eco Team has been the cause of some changes, including the awareness students now have in regards to waste.
"The biggest change is the children's awareness of what waste they're bringing to school. Also, that we have less rubbish in our school each day," Rebecca said.
"Another change would be the trickle down effect, we have children from our school packing their sibling's lunchboxes and talking to their parents about being a 'zero hero' which means bringing less rubbish to school, but it also means what you buy at the supermarket."
Next on the agenda for the Eco Team leaders is the addition of boxes for native insects to encourage growth and a home for the creatures in the school's gardens.
"The next project is really exciting, it's going to be a biodiversity project where we are going to build bee and insect hotels to welcome native bees and insects into our gardens," Rebecca said.
"The school will get involved by helping us design the hotels, they'll be nice and bright, we will be planting plants near them to attract them to the area.
"I'm really proud of our school community, the students, teachers and parents, and just how positively everyone has embraced this."
After obtaining the bronze award in October of 2020, Cudgegong Valley Public School hopes to achieve a green flag as part of Eco-Schools Australia.