War on Waste

About The Program

The activities in this program are suitable for Foundation – Grade 8. Please see Program Options for full list of activities to choose from. 

The EcoCentre provides a wide range of waste related excursion activities covering the 6 R’s – Rethink, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Remove. Allowing schools to tailor their excursion to match curriculum needs, inquiry topic and student projects. 

The activities delivered through our War on Waste excursion will provide your students with hands-on experiences where they learn about our ever increasing problems with waste.
• How is waste produced? What is resource consumption?
• How do our lifestyle choices and actions affect our ecological footprint?
• What are the best ways to reduce the impact of waste on lour environment?

Location:

 Port Phillip EcoCentre, St Kilda Botanical Gardens, 55A Blessington St, St Kilda VIC 3182

Excursion Duration:

4 hours (10am – 2pm). Shorter excursions (60min, 90min or 2 hour) can also be arranged.

Year Level:

Prep to Year 8

Maximum number of classes:

4 (Group max: 25)

Cost per class:

$500 + GST

Availability

All terms on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Most suitable in the warmer, drier months of term 1 and 4.

Program Themes:

 War on Waste, litter, recycling, compost, worm farms, Captain Trash, Nurdles, STEAM, STEM

Understandings & Inquiry Skills
• F-2 Earth’s resources are used in a variety of ways (VCSSU047)
• F-2 Use informal measurements in the collection and recording of observations (VCSIS052)
• 3-4 Science knowledge helps people to understand the effects of their actions (VCSSU056)
• 5-6 Scientific understandings, discoveries and inventions are used to inform personal and community decisions and to solve problems that directly affect people’s lives (VCSSU073)
• 7-8 Human causes of landscape degradation, the effects on landscape quality and the implications for places (VCGGK119)

Full Day Program: Please select up to 3 activities (1hr each). If you are a school of 4 classes (max 100 students) you will select 4 activities (45 mins each). 

Shorter excursions of up to 60 minutes, 90 minutes or 2 hours can also be arranged

1. Worms and Compost Systems (F-8)
Learn about worms, compost and why we want to remove food and green waste from landfill. Students will be hands-on with learning about and observing worms within our worm farm and learning how organic waste becomes nutrients for our garden beds. They will come to understand the complete food cycle, from garden to plate to compost and back to garden again.

2. Radical Recycling Relay (F-8)
Students will learn about natural resources and where they come from before exploring how we can prevent these materials from ending up in landfill. Group relay activity to learn about what particular item goes in what bin (landfill, recycling, organic, soft plastic, reuse) and what happens to it once it is in the bin. 

3. Litter Timeline & Paper Bin Liners (F-8)
Learn about Melbourne’s most common litter items and create a timeline on how long litter items take to breakdown, if they do breakdown at all. Discover where litter comes from, how it travels and where it ends up. Conduct a litter collection to understand what are the most common forms of litter and to help our environment.
Using newspaper, the students will make their own paper bin liners replacing the need for plastic bin liners. Bin liners will go home with the students.

4. Hungry Planet and Food miles (4-8)
Discover human food systems, including where food comes from and the environmental and cultural factors within different countries. Students will learn about food systems, food miles, food waste, packaging, agricultural land use, local and seasonal food and growing your own food.

5. Captain Trash (F-4)
Our interactive musical pirate will share the 6 aaaaRRRRRRs (rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and remove) to engage your students and to help spread the word.

Note: Captain Trash is very popular and has limited availability, so not always available.

Restrictions: Our group sizes are capped at 25 students and our maximum is 100 per excursion. More than 4 classes can be accommodated by special request.
We will send you instructions for transport and a day plan after you book.

Please note we only run excursions on Tuesdays and Thursdays

5. E-waste Extravaganza
Learn what e-waste is and why it is our fastest growing type of waste. Learn about the life cycle of a computer and what a second and third life can look like. Now that e-waste is banned from landfill, discover the correct ways to manage it. Find out about community solutions like Repair Café, tool libraries and fix it groups.

6. Nurdles in our environment (STEAM)
Discover how plastic starts its life as a ‘nurdle’ and how they are escaping into the environment and harming the environment and animals. Use STEAM ideas to experiment with various pieces of equipment to design ways of capturing nurdles out of sand to find solutions to our plastics problems.

8. Sam the Seadragon
Our puppet Sam the weedy Seadragon has an important message to share about the life in Port Phillip Bay, food chains and energy exchanges within an ecosystem. As Victoria’s marine emblem Sam was happily surviving in Port Phillip Bay until plastic started to enter the ecosystem. Through hands-on activities students will learn about why plastics are amazing but when they get out of control they cause problems for our wildlife.

"Thank you very much. It was an amazing excursion; my students and I have learnt many things to implement in our school."

- High School Teacher

Book Today

Please note, outdoor excursions only run on Tues, Wed, Thursdays.

School Information

Organising Teacher Details

The EcoCentre acknowledges the Kulin Nations, including the Yalukut Weelam clan of the Boon Wurrung language group, traditional owners of the land on which we are located.

We pay respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to other Aboriginal and Elder members of our multicultural community.