Green Pages Camberwell Grammar teacher and Sustainability Coordinator, Mr Will Hone, shares the story behind the creation of the Towards2050 group and how his passion for sustainability took hold within the School community, leading it to become a pillar in the School’s strategic plan. In 2015 I was engaged in an email conversation with some friends – all of us have children and the Paris conference was approaching. There were some suggestions that it was too little, too late, that climate change is too big to tackle – that little people like us held no sway over huge global events. Replying to my friends, I realised that I needed to answer the question I can imagine any child alive today asking their parents at some point in the next twenty years: What did you do when you found out the climate was collapsing? I needed to be able to show my son the things I did to fight for his future. I needed to take action, even if I am only a small cog in the global behemoth that is our civilisation, because I needed an answer for him. The first thing I did was start a student action group, Towards2050. Our first target was solar. The School went large, installing 888kw of panels – enough to produce 48% of our net energy usage (and from January next year, all our power – 100% – will be sourced from renewable generation). The conversion of lights to LED also started way back then and is now over 95% complete. Despite making huge steps, the School did not stop there. They shared my outrage at the amount of landfill we were
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creating, and the boys helped me design a new layout for bins around the School that included co-mingled recycling bins next to every landfill bin. We started to stream rubbish, and now have co-mingled, paper and cardboard, green, organic and landfill collections. While there is still much to be done, particularly in streaming schoolyard waste, our landfill footprint has been halved. We set about removing single-use plastics from the School, starting with the tuck shop and events catering. The School helped me organise stainless steel water bottles so we wouldn’t have water in plastic bottles sold on campus, and then made plastic a big thing when the new catering contract was up for negotiation. It is worth noting that Chartwells, who took on the new contract, has been amazing and there is now rarely singleuse plastic at Camberwell events. If you do see any single-use plastics, the chances are that it is from Biopak. Their cardboard is free of wood, and their plastics free of any petrochemicals – instead they make magic with plant-based materials that will break down in significantly less time than the estimated 500 odd years it takes for traditional plastics to completely degrade, releasing far fewer demonic chemicals in the process. It is also worth noting that while the Covid pandemic has led to an increase in our plastic consumption, we are very keen and constantly searching for ways to safely reign this in.
