Spotlight School – Cornish College

Cornish College built sustainability into the entire school culture and curriculum when it was established in 2012. Their vision is “to educate students for a sustainable future to ensure young people can make a positive difference in their local and global communities.”

In ‘Educating for a sustainable future’, their most simple definition of sustainability is making a difference for a world where there is enough for all, forever. To ensure Cornish College achieve their vision, they embed sustainability in its widest form, within the curriculum through their four Rings of Sustainability – representing natural, personal, urban/technological, and socio-cultural sustainability.

The College has won state and regional awards for its EcoCentre, which allows students to learn and create outdoors and to build their own knowledge base around sustainability, animals, food production and the use of recycled materials.

Cornish College joined the ResourceSmart Schools program in December 2015 and has since saved over $215,000 in resource usage costs. In 2020 the school was certified for Core and 1Star and actively participated in the program. The College has generously hosted two regional Progress Workshops with CERES and shared resources with the ResourceSmart Schools network.

The College is very close to submitting their Biodiversity Module and Second Star and has been working on ways to identify areas around the College and community in which they can make a difference in contributing to a sustainable future, such as their clean canteen initiative developed by students.

Additionally, the College has made a pledge in the TAKE-2 initiative of “Working together, we pledge to play our part and take action on climate change for Victoria, our country and our planet.”

The College is ‘on track’ to fulfil this pledge. One year after the completion of their LED and solar project, their electricity bill has been reduced by more than 50% and the reduction in their energy usage is equivalent to saving more than 250,000 kg CO2.

An ongoing challenge for the College is to continue to reduce the landfill waste per student, per year, by reducing on-site waste generation and expanding their six waste streams of Paper/Cardboard, General Recycling, Food Scraps, E-Waste, Cartridge, and Landfill across the whole school.

Visit Cornish College’s website to read more about their sustainability journey.

By ceres|2021-03-30T14:43:26+11:00March 30th, 2021|Featured, Outreach News, School of Nature and Climate News|0 Comments