Students’ poster campaign helps kick-start a recycling culture at Turner Primary.
After the introduction of three ACT Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) collection bins at their school, teacher Laura Langston and her Year 3 and 4 class launched a marketing competition to get their fellow students excited about recycling.
Turner Primary School received a presentation on getting started with the ACT CDS in September 2025. Shortly after, the Parents and Citizens Association organised for three of the CDS’s distinctive purple bins to be delivered to the school. The funds raised from the collection of eligible drink containers through the ACT CDS are going back into sustainability initiatives for the school.
To ensure the bins were well used, Laura came up with the idea of a poster-making competition. The initiative was driven by the students in Laura’s class who wanted to promote recycling around the school.
The Year 3 and 4 students created posters that were showcased in assemblies, newsletters and information boards in the Junior and Senior school to encourage students of all ages to participate in the CDS. Some of the catch phrases the students created included: “Recycle today, save tomorrow” and “Recycle a bottle and get 10c back! Save our planet.”
The students also helped fill the bins themselves, working in lunch time crews and other groups to find, collect and sort containers from the playground – each eligible drink container of which raised 10c for the school.
Laura notes how educational the experience was as students discovered the wide range of containers that could be recycled. The kids were particularly excited to find out they could recycle their Up & Go drink cartons.
She adds that her students are very conscious of sustainability and the environment, and that the school has also been very focused on discussing these topics.
“We wanted to enquire further into sustainability as the school already had worm farms and compost bins,” Laura says. “It’s a great next step in our sustainability journey and the kids’ journeys.”
The posters have proved to be very effective at raising awareness of the benefits of recycling through the CDS. The purple bins have been particularly well used during major school events such as the end of year disco, Year 6 Farewell and end-of-year concerts in late 2025. “In one night, during the whole-school disco, we collected two wheely bins worth of cans!” Laura reports.
The P&C has also established some extra drop-off locations for containers outside the school and is implementing QR codes to inform the community about them. Parents and students can leave containers at those locations, then a member of the P&C collects them and brings them to the CDS deposit bins at the end of each term.
With the success of their initial purple bins, Turner Primary’s Stainability Portfolio have recently chosen to purchase 12 new bins for their outdoor spaces.
