Environment and Sustainability
St Michael's is a RESOURCESMART School.
As a ResourceSmart School, St Michael's Primary School embeds sustainability into everything we do; school operations, curriculum and community engagement. ResourceSmart Schools is a Victorian Government initiative that helps schools benefit from being sustainable.
Schools are guided in taking action to minimise waste, save energy and water, promote biodiversity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ResourceSmart Schools helps schools reduce costs while giving students the opportunity to learn about sustainability in a tangible and realistic environment and puts them in touch with networks, programs and organisations focused on sustainability.
Key features
- Support Sustainability experts support the school on their sustainability journey and schools track and measure their progress using the online system.
- Recognition Sustainability Certification and the ResourceSmart Schools Awards recognise and reward school activity.
- Savings on energy, water and waste bills – and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Adaptable Schools create a unique environmental management system and can work with any sustainability program or organisation within the ResourceSmart Schools framework.
- Students learn take-home lessons about sustainable actions as required by the Australian Curriculum.
- Sustainable schools learn to reduce their costs and minimise their impact on the environment through efficient resource use.
- Community Practical support for schools and communities to live and work more sustainably and to support other schools and environmental partners along the way.
For the last three, years our school has worked with CERES ( Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) to develop an action plan by which our school community can ensure our students can work to reach the goals set by the ResourceSmart School initiative . For more information on CERES please visit their website at http://ceres.org.au/
Support and Benefits
The ResourceSmart Schools program has five modules to help our school track its sustainability journey and identify savings made. Core is the foundation module to be completed first. As a school, we can complete the other four modules – Energy, Waste, Water and Biodiversity – in any order, or even at the same time. With over 200 actions across five modules, ResourceSmart Schools helps us make the small steps required to get huge results for our school.
To recognise the hard work and performance of ResourceSmart schools, Sustainability Certification provides a platform for schools to reach for the stars – from 1 to 5 stars, with 5 Star as the ultimate achievement! For more information please visit