It’s hard to believe Kangaroo Inn Area School would have a hard time recycling something as simple as paper and cardboard.
Key points:
- Kangaroo Inn Area School is a small rural school on South Australia’s Limestone Coast
- Until this year they couldn’t do basic recycling of paper and cardboard – 90 per cent of the school’s waste
- Since writing to council in 2019, it’s taken two years to be able to recycle
The rural school on South Australia’s Limestone Coast does more for the environment than most.
At their Centre for Sustainable Living students tend a vegetable garden, vineyard and recirculating fish farm, where students raise rainbow trout with solar-powered pumps and use their waste as a fertiliser for watercress and “various other plants”.
Which is why it pained science teacher Tom Davidson to discover their paper and cardboard was going to landfill.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)For decades, the site had been left off their council’s recycling route, forced to send everything to landfill.
“It was a real challenge because obviously as a school we produce and use a stack of paper,” Mr Davidson.
“[And] it never got recycled, it was never offered at this site.”
In 2019 Mr Davidson’s year 8 students decided to do something about it. After two years of bureaucracy they finally have the ability to recycle, but it hasn’t been easy.
Vicious cycle of ‘bureaucracy’
Mr Davidson said his class were largely unaware their paper was going to landfill before the project.
“Humans are capable of some pretty incredible stuff, you know, travelling to the moon and genetic cloning but we are still yet able to recycle which seems to be priority number one,” Mr Davidson said.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)“So [the students] wrote quite a long and lengthy letter explaining this to the council and feeling like it was within their rights to ask the council for a service.”
They didn’t hear anything for a while until it was listed on the agenda for a public forum meeting, which Tom Davidson attended.
“[There was] a lengthy discussion which resulted in a lot of people not wanting to do anything about it really,” Mr Davidson said.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)Tough in a rural area
Mr Davidson has some empathy for the process.
“It’s not any blame to anyone [at council], it was just a really tricky scenario based on the fact we’re a rural, isolated site and no one could see how they could weave it into a budget logically,” Mr Davidson said.
He encouraged his students to realise that ‘sometimes policies and processes aren’t that effective.”
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)Her friend Lana Morrison — who has lived in Kangaroo Inn her whole life — didn’t think their hard work would pay off either.
“But then Tom Davidson kept going to the meetings and he really spoke up for us and that’s when we finally got what we were asking for,” Ms Morrison said.
Getting the skip bin
After persisting with it for two years, Tom Davidson and his class were awarded with a skip bin.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)The school has to pay for the skip and $100 every time it’s collected. A small fee to divert 90 per cent of the site’s waste from landfill.
Mr Davidson’s Year 10 class have since created a traffic light bin system for the whole school.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)“Hopefully this helps other schools realise that recycling is possible if you make the effort.”
Students leading the charge
Mr Davidson said seeing his students lead the charge has been one of the most rewarding parts.
“Seeing how keen and passionate students can get about making a positive difference and really doing what’s right,” Mr Davidson said.
“These are the future stewards of the planets so this is what they’re going to inherit and we want it all to look good.”
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)They’ve just opened the recycling centre to the wider community to help people like Lana recycle their bottles and cans locally.
“My family, we have to travel to the nearest town to take our recycling so it would be really good if we can donate here,” Ms Morrison said.
The money raised goes back into funding the skip and helping to pay for school camps and excursions too.
Mr Davidson said the work doesn’t stop there.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
)They’ve started looking at the possibility of Precious Plastics on site, moulding recycled bottle lids and other plastics into everyday items.
“If we can take the time to rethink and reevaluate what the future looks like and how we can prepare students to be competent and confident in that space, things are going to change quite dramatically.”
And the country is a good place to do it.
ABC South East SA: Bec Whetham
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