Thanks to the Australian Women's Weekly, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Visy Recycling you have the CHANCE TO WIN $10,000 EACH MONTH! Join our search for Environmental Heroes.

Environmental champion Anthony Pratt joins The Weekly to launch a competition to unearth Australia's Environmental Heroes – young Aussies who have brilliant ideas for battling climate change and saving endangered species.

An Environmental Hero prize winner will be selected each month for the next 10 months and awarded $10,000 each. The competition is only open to school, community, social and sporting groups in Australia with at least one adult 18 years and over. To be in the running to win, get your entry form from this month's issue of The Australian Women's Weekly.

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ENVIRONMENTAL HEROES – July 2008

An extract from The Australian Women's Weekly (July 2008, pg. 162)
Meet our latest winner

The $10,000 award this month goes to Chum Creek Primary School, a tiny school aiming to make a big difference.

Everyone knows that the earth's survival in decades to come depends on us creating environmentally sustainable communities. For the 35 students at tiny Chum Creek Primary School, 60km from Melbourne, the future is now. "Being environmental heroes comes naturally to our children," says the principle, Ken Sturt.

Chum Creek has a history of environmental sustainability, but the kids' crusade took flight last year when Year Six students attended a Young Environmental Protectors Conference. "It was a rich learning experience that helped them realised ways they could make a difference, by saving water and power, and reducing our environmental footprint," says Ken.

Protecting the planet is on the curriculum at Chum Creek and that's why they are July's Environmental Heroes. "We're doing tons of exciting stuff," says teacher Samantha Holman.

As part of a water efficiency program eight new water tanks are being installed at the school to complement existing waste and water irrigation systems. By year's end, except for drinking water, Chum Creek will be water sufficient. "This will reduce our consumption by 650 kilolitres annually," says Ken. The $10,000 prize money donated by The Australian Women's Weekly, Visy Recycling, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Nine Network's Today show will help fund those tanks.

"The kids take the environment very seriously," says Samantha, with a chuckle. "Last summer, things got quite tense when anyone was seen wasting water!"

Lights, heater and cooler use have been slashed. Children get to and from school by bus or car pools. Ways to protect the endangered helmeted honeyeater birds are examined and a "frog bog" hosts aquatic life.

"Our organic vegetable garden gives students hands-on experience of small-scale organic food production," says Ken.

Students also join in Farmarama program at a local farm, where they learn about permaculture and ethical animal husbandry, milk the goat, prepare organic fetta cheese, feed animals and plant trees.

School lunches are rubbish free with wrappings being recycled, while the chooks and worm farm residents make short work of scraps. The hens' eggs are sold to pay for their feed. Principle Sturt buys his share. "They're delicious and go great with morning bacon," he says. At Chum Creek Primary everybody wins.

 

Environmental Heroes – June 2008

an extract from The Australian Women's Weekly (June 2008, pg. 228)
MEET OUR LATEST WINNER

This month the $10,000 prize goes to the Sustainables, school children committed to using the earth's natural resources wisely.

They call themselves the Sustainables. Sounds like a band of enviro superheroes, which is what these children from Port Fairy Consolidated School in Victoria are. The Year 5 and Year 6 students are this month's Environmental Heroes for their Earth Credit System, a sustainability program that promotes the sustainable use of the earth's natural resources – and makes it fun.

"We save energy by allocating a number of Earth Credits, or points, to each class at the start of each week and these credits are added to, or lost, depending on how responsible the students are," explains Port Fairy Consolidated's environmental studies teacher, Tracey Gray.

So, wear a jumper instead of using classroom heating, and you're rewarded with 10 credit points or, in summer, open the classroom window rather than flicking on the air-conditioning and you win 100 credits. Yet any class leaving on the lights during lunch is docked 100 credits and failing to turn off your computer monitor when you're outside loses 20 credit points. Those who don't do so well must plant a number of trees to recapture the carbon they used unwisely.

The program began last year. In the first term, the school's energy usage dropped 10 per cent. "The students aim to achieve a 70 per cent reduction by fourth term this year," says Tracey. "They believe they can change the way we use energy and recycle. They are not afraid to think big."

The Sustainables want five local schools to be running their own Earth Credits program by the end of 2008. After that, they aim to establish Earth Credits in schools across Victoria, then Australia-wide.

Now the children from Port Fairy have a new scheme: their Trees 2B CO2 Free Challenge, in which every child plants 91 seedlings each year. With each of us creating 24.5 tonnes of CO2 a year and each tree absorbing 270kg CO2 in the same period, "we calculate that, if we plant 91 trees," explains Tracey, "our carbon dioxide emissions are reduced to zero".

The school will use the $10,000 prize donated by The Australian Women's Weekly, Visy Recycling, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Nine Network's Today show to produce "kids-teaching-kids" education packs to spread the environmental message. "These children are real heroes" says Tracey. "It's wonderful to see them making decisions, respecting each other, working as a team. Their passion gives me goosebumps." And gives the planet a better chance of survival.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL HERO

An extract from The Australian Women's Weekly (April 2008, pg. 264)
Meet our latest winner!
Environmental Heroes: This month, the $10,000 award goes to a passionate climate change crusader and her dedicated team.

Many travellers return from spiritual, spectacular Nepal with tales of life changing experiences. Lauren Baird, 25, had one too, but it had nothing to do with awesome Himalayan scenery or an encounter with a Hindu swami. 'The smog in Kathmandu was choking and the waste everywhere was turning a beautiful place into a rubbish dump,' she says. 'I decided to do everything in my power to help stop Australia going down this same track.'

So, in December 2007, the Melbourne engineer, with the help of environmental engineering and science consultancy Synergetics Environmental Engineering set up Stop the Black Balloons ('black balloons' are 50g measurements of greenhouse gas emissions), a not-for-profit organisation and website to educate Australian's to be environmentally responsible and offer advice on successfully establishing eco-friendly businesses.

For creating www.stoptheblackballoons.com, the irrepressible and passionate crusader and her team of 40 odd volunteers aged 16 to 70 have won this month's Environmental Heroes award, sponsored by The Australian Women's Weekly, Visy Recycling, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Nine Network's Today Show.

The $10,000 prize money will pay the registration fee for the site's free accredited online degree course, whose curriculum is now being finalised, on battling greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. 'Degree holders will enter the workplace and apply what they've learned to set up environmentally friendly businesses or change existing businesses,' says Lauren. 'Gradually all over the country, there will be change for the better.'

In addition to Lauren and what she calls 'our mighty volunteers', the website boasts high-wattage contributors: Synergentics' director Dave Collins, Claire Penniceard, 2006 winner of the Telstra Business Women's Award for Australian Government Business Innovation, whose sustainable piggery won world acclaim; sustainability strategist Katherine Teh-White, a Telstra Business Woman of the Year award winner in 2000; and Professor Markus Reuter, the chair of sustainable technology at the University of Melbourne.

The continuity updated Stop Black Balloons website offers interactive climate change tools for all ages, video galleries, a virtual world tour of climate change hot spots, a recycling calculator and a climate change timeline.

There is information for schoolchildren, professionals and academics, and lots of basic commonsense ('use less of everything – energy, water, consumables – everything!'). Executives advise on eco-business opportunities and a 'shame file' names transgressors, such as banning of bicycles on peak hour VLine and Citylink trains in Melbourne.

Perhaps just as important, the website makes our air, land and sea a lot of fun. There's an interactive 'pop the black balloons' game. 'And,' says Lauren, 'our Poster Creator lets you design your own posters for classroom, home or office. I've got one next to the dishwasher saying, 'Put Me On Eco Cycle'.'

Education, Lauren believes, is the most important tool in combating climate change. 'It's essential that everyone understands how close to the brink our planet is and why and what changes need to take place.'

 

ENVIRONMENTAL HERO

An extract from The Australian Women's Weekly (March 2008, pg. 242)
Meet our first winner!
Environmental Heroes: Each month, we will be awarding $10,000 to young people working to save our planet

The Children at Bentleigh West Primary School in Melbourne are giving us a lesson in conservation. Six years ago, spurred on by environmental science teacher Leonie Brown and principle Jennifer Small, the school became a 'dynamic hands-on working model of environmental sustainability' says Leonie.

'We are giving life-long environment-sustaining attitudes, skills and values,' adds Jennifer. 'I used to be the three R's. Now it's the four R's: recycling, reusing, reducing, and rethinking.'

The school grounds are a lush patchwork of 'learning landscapes': bountiful vegetable gardens, revegetated wetlands, a dry forest, sensory gardens, succulent and drought tolerant gardens. The greening of the school and energy-saving measures have won Bentleigh West Primary The Weekly's first monthly Environmental Hero Award. 'The prize of $10,000 will buy research facilities, simulators and laptops to equip a special environmental classroom,' says Jennifer.

The 380 students, staff and parents have sown more than 1520 native plants in the grounds. And it's a convenient truth that the learning landscapes and conservation of water and power have reduced energy by 25 per cent and saved 53 tonnes of CO2. Repairing leaky taps and installing rainwater tanks preserves 1,500 bathtubs of water annually, and stormwater is diverted to wetlands, gardens and sports fields. Everyone walks to school in October.

'We teach by doing and by having fun,' says Leonie. 'We sit in the gardens for lessons. Our learning landscapes demonstrate the history of land use and there's a gathering place garden, celebrating the cultural heritage of the original landowners, the Wurundjeri community. Cooking classes serve food from the garden.' There's even a 'poet tree' festooned with sonnets and couplets of budding bards.

Bentleigh West pupils have sown more than 5,000 indigenous shrubs and trees on the local foreshore and in the parks, and they clean up the litter. They choose a venue, study its environmental sustainability, then construct 3D models of the place using alternative energy sources, such as solar power panels, wind turbines, geo-thermal and methane gas, and send their findings to administrators hoping they'll make use of the tip. In March pupils will attend the Australian Grand Prix and offer suggestions to organisers on making the event more environmentally friendly.

'I'm proud of my school,' says Emma Belotti, 11. 'What I've learned here about conservation will stay with me all my life. And I'll teach my children, who can tell their kids how they can save our world.'