What started as a math class exercise, in a few short years, has turned into a fundraising opportunity that is getting students at Kingsford Smith School excited about recycling.
Tim Kirsopp, Science and Math teacher at Kingsford Smith School, set his class a math problem to determine how much money the school was potentially throwing away in eligible 10c containers each year. From there the idea took off, with students recognising the potential of their bottles, cans and cartons to make money by recycling through the ACT Container Deposit Scheme (CDS).
“Every day, 50 kids might bring a juice popper to school. That’s five dollars that can easily be made every day,” said Byson, a student at Kingsford Smith School.
The school now has six dedicated bins that are collected by the ACT CDS mobile collection service each week. A refund of 7c for every eligible container collected is returned to the school, after the 3c service fee is applied to each container.
Students at the school have the opportunity to use the funds raised from the ACT CDS container refunds to fund extracurricular activities.
So far, the money raised has been used to purchase two lion dancing costumes for the school’s lion dancing troupe and supported the school’s Science, Technology, engineering and mathematics (STEMIES) team to travel to nationals in Adelaide after winning the ACT divisions of the Kids in Space and STEMIE Speedway competitions.
“Container refunds were a big help. That was around, a quarter of the money that we needed to get to Adelaide,” said Ezekiel a student and STEMIES team member at Kingsford Smith School.
With students reaping the rewards of participating in the ACT CDS, the school has seen great engagement from students who are not only placing eligible containers in the correct bins but encouraging one another to do the same.
