Sustainability

Our Sustainability Goals

We have three main goals of our sustainability program:

  1. The children are the leads of taking care of their environment, worm farms, composting etc as these practices are embedded within the program. It is a main focus to ensure children have respect for the environment and know how to maintain, care for, and understand the different aspects of sustainable practices.
  2. Continue to implement the food cycle for the children to experience first hand (growing fruits and vegetables, collecting eggs). This gives children insight into the production of food and where it comes from (not just a shopping centre).
  3. Minimising our carbon footprint
    1. Going digital in administration (enrolment process)
    2. Minimisation of electricity – turning fans and lights off when out in the yard
    3. Minimising water usage – using water from the bottles to water garden
    4. Recycled materials are a main use in artwork and construction
    5. Encouraging parents to bring in waste-free lunches
    6. Consumption of environmentally friendly resources such as our paper towels, toilet paper, etc
Outdoor garden part of sustainabiliity program
Chickens at the Sunny Hills Child Care centre

Our Activities include:

  • A worm farm in the Kindy B room to provide children with the opportunity to recycle left over food scraps from morning tea to feed the worms. They also learn what happens to the food when it is left in the worm farm (food decomposition) and the important steps of how to care for the worms (feeding and watering the soil).
  • The centre has two chickens, McFluffy & Marshmallow (named by the children). This gives the children the opportunity to participate in their environment through feeding the chickens each morning and afternoon, cleaning their mini mansion and provides knowledge of the food cycle through egg collection. The eggs are used in the service’s cooking experiences each week.
  • The service has a compost bin – left over food scraps that do not get fed to the worms get placed in the compost, along with the chicken droppings. This is turned and has helped produce healthy soil for our gardens.
  • Gardening is an important aspect of our sustainability. Children are involved in watering each day and the planting of any new seeds/seedlings. Once the food is grown, lettuce is fed to the chickens (extending on the food cycle) and the rest is used in cooking or eaten by the children.
  • Embedded Envirobank project – Children and families continue to bring in recyclable bottles and cans to be recycled to the TOMRA and Envirobank outposts. The money raised through this is either donated to a charity chosen by the children and families or used to contribute to an incursion for the children.

Our Solar Panels

The solar panels are showcased in the foyer where there is a monitoring system the children and parents can check up on to see how much electricity the service is producing, consuming and sending back to the grid – each showed by a different colour on a graph.

There is an educational engagement with Energy Partners.

Preschool children visit the foyer regularly to monitor our usage and make sure we are not consuming too much electricity. They have discussions in the classroom on how the solar panels produce electricity for us to use and how it is better for the environment than alternative methods.

Parents and children engage in the monitoring system on arrival and departure of the centre.

Solar panels on the roof of Sunny Hills Child Care and Education Centre