Green Pages

Last year was not a lot of fun – but you probably don’t need to read the Sustainability Roundup to realise this. While everything went to the wall, a small and intrepid group of Camberwell boys worked over several months to get a presentation ready for the Kids Teaching Kids Conference. This conference is (normally) a gathering of kids from around the country to talk about what they are doing to create sustainable learning environments and in 2020 was, of course, transferred to the online world.

Andrew Hare and Jacob Clark showed incredible resilience in the face of uncertainty. While the topic of the presentation was forced to change with shifting circumstances, the final presentation on how to establish a gardening space provided students from around Australia with an engaging and productive activity. Beyond the incredible production values behind the presentation, the boys did an amazing job in working with extremely trying circumstances.

Growing Green

Plans are underway to develop a new garden space outside Kingussie which will eventually house a water tank, greenhouse and several vegetable garden beds. We are also hoping to establish a distribution bench to send the fruits of our labours into the community. Watch this space for more information – or even better, watch the new garden space grow in the lead up to spring!

Recycling at School

Camberwell Grammar offers many ways to help you move your waste to the appropriate place. The Weickhardt Library houses our Mobile Muster phone recycling box. Did you know it is more productive to mine mobile phones than to mine ore for gold? Mobile Muster undertakes this process, mining old phones for their valuable resources and completely disintegrates the hardware in the process. Nevertheless, we strongly recommend you erase all data from your device before sending it in for dismantling. Meanwhile, the Highton carpark is also home to our clothing and e-waste bins. Bring your old clothes to the bin and they will be repurposed or, if they are beyond further use, turned into fuel for power stations. You can bring in old clothes, shoes, and sheets and they will all be steered away from landfill. Our e-waste collection ensures that your old televisions, toasters or any other electronic appliances can be broken down into useful components and elements. Together with Mobile Muster, this ensures that you no longer need to have the toxic legacy of old technology hanging around your home – bring it to school instead and it will be dealt with in a responsible and sustainable manner.

Mr Will Hone

Sustainability Coordinator

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The Junior School’s New Native Water Garden

The CGS Junior School boys are enjoying the new native water garden, designed by Regan Davies, Senior Grounds Officer, and Howard Kelly, Head of Junior School. ‘We wanted to create a natural setting in which the boys could interact with nature to some degree and recreate what would be a natural setting found throughout Victoria,’ says Regan. The boys are very excited about the garden’s new inhabitants, especially the two eastern long-neck turtles, who the boys get to feed daily. With mud rock steppingstones and a pebbled creek area, the boys can step through the garden or build dams and rapids with the river stones, inviting them to play and get close to the turtles and fish.

This new garden is the start of a five-year plan aimed at transforming and enhancing the look and horticultural wealth of the CGS gardens.

“The boys are very excited about the garden’s new inhabitants.”