Whitehorse News - October 2023

Three Parkmore Primary School students have been educating their schoolmates – and Whitehorse Councillors – about the damaging impact of soft plastics and challenging them to do better.

Grade 4 students Seb, Emily and Jake (pictured) developed the Soft Plastics Environmental Earth Defense (SPEED) project group as part of their studies.

As they started researching, they uncovered the alarming impact soft plastics can have on the environment, biodiversity, wildlife and humanity.

They also uncovered how much soft plastic was in their schoolmates’ lunchboxes. They discovered students were bringing 1300 pieces to school a month and 15,600 pieces a year, all of which was going into landfill.

This led the trio to develop a challenge for the entire school – to go plastic and wrapper free for the month of October.

To help their schoolmates and their families, they created brochures detailing how to make wrapper-free lunchboxes, along with recipes and helpful tips to avoid the purchase of single-use plastics.

The trio presented to Councillors at their meeting on 11 September, asking for Council’s help to promote their work and encourage other schools to also take the challenge.

They received a huge round of applause from the gallery and Mayor Mark Lane promised to put their brochures on display, which you can pick up from Council’s Civic Centre in Nunawading.

Join Parkmore Primary School and take the Wrapper Free October pledge! For more information email SPEED at speedsoftplastics@gmail.com