Braybrook College has taken out two accolades at the 2023 ResourceSmart Schools Awards held in Melbourne on Thursday, June 15.
The sustainability-savvy school won the Community Leadership School of the Year in the secondary division.
Secondly, teacher Rowena Archer won Teacher of the Year for the secondary division.
“Everyone involved is excited we have been recognised and awarded for our efforts in sustainability,” Ms Archer said.
“It feels good to be recognised, it gives people the impetus to do more and makes us really excited to keep going.”
With carbon neutrality ambitions, the school encourages recycling and reuse with stations for old batteries and mobile phones as well as book exchanges.
With Ms Archer’s vision and dedication, the school has increased its solar panels from three to 100KW, conducted a carbon audit and installed new water tanks and waste and biodiversity facilities.
Matt Genever, interim chief executive of Sustainability Victoria, said the Braybrook school community was a tremendous role model whose work will inspire other schools to take action.
“I applaud the students, teachers, school staff and volunteers at Braybrook College who are achieving great things in sustainability,” he said.
“As well as showing outstanding leadership, I’d like to thank Ms Archer for her remarkable achievements.”
Sustainability Victoria’s ResourceSmart Schools Awards are Victoria’s largest sustainability awards for schools.
The ResourceSmart Schools program supports all Victorian primary and secondary schools to embed sustainability across their school facilities, community and curriculum, which Ms Archer said makes for healthy competition.
“There were some great entries across the board this year, it’s so great to see the sustainable work being done across the state,” she said.
Jennifer Pittorino
