Hi Toni
With the impact of this dreadful drought hurting everyone whether they are in town
or country,
"going green" has just become the norm here and every school has something
happening. The news
bulletins and current affairs shows regularly have items about schools (often
primary) who have
created whole mini-wetlands environments by recycling water; who are growing all
fresh veges for use
in the school canteen (huge incentive to eat slim) who are raising chickens on
their lunch scraps or
have compost bins and worm farms and sell the products to parents.
Energy saving is just natural to them and words like carbon footprint and climate
change and
sustainability are regular vocab now. One of our biggest education publishers is
about to launch an
online reading initiative based on sustainability and I've been writing dozens of
activities to
accompany books on the theme. Huge interest in that.
But one of the best initiatives is by Blue Scope Steel who are donating a water
tank a day to a
school for a year, so that will be 200 schools with the ability to harvest water.
You can find out
more at http://www.tankaday.com.au/ But many more than 200 have installed tanks,
using P&C funds,
fundraisers or local council grants. It's really exciting, particularly to see
that this 'going
green" is being driven by the kids through to their parents (who vote) and right up
to the Prime
Minister who resifted Kyoto as one of his first duties after he was elected. (He's
actually in
Washington now.). Coming from the bottom up means that habits become behaviours
and will be
sustained.
Will be really interested to see what US littlies are doing.
Barbara
Barbara Braxton
Teacher Librarian
COOMA NSW 2630
AUSTRALIA
E. barbara.288@bigpond.com
Together we learn from each other
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