Clean up starts with schools

BRASSALL State School students are stepping out of the classroom and into the playground to learn how to take care of their environment.

Deputy principal Rayne Penny said students who participated in the school’s annual Clean Up Australia Day event this Friday would learn the importance of keeping their environment tidy.

“Children need to understand that this is their country – children don’t look at it globally of course, but this is their school and this is their town that they need to keep neat and tidy,” he said.

Mr Penny said Clean Up Australia Day gave the children an opportunity to put their environmental studies into practice.

“At a certain time in the day they will go out and clean their areas and we’ll talk about it as they go,” he said.

The event is also being used as an opportunity to educate the children on what to do when they find unsafe objects.

“Anything that the children think is a little bit suspicious, they have to get the teacher,” he said.

Mr Penny said it was hoped that the children’s environmental awareness would spread throughout the general community.

“We hope looking after their school environment will broaden out to their community and looking after their own houses,” he said.

This Sunday, March 7, volunteers across Booval will gather at McDonald’s Booval to clean up tonnes of rubbish to help fight climate change and protect the environment as part of this year’s national Clean Up Australia Day campaign.

To celebrate 20 years of partnership with Clean Up Australia Day, McDonald’s Booval restaurant is encouraging local residents to join their crew at the restaurant clean up site on Sunday at 9am to help add to the 200,000 tonnes of rubbish already collected nationally since the first national clean up in 1990.

This year, McDonald’s Booval will also provide customers with a mobile phone collection bin to encourage residents to recycle their old and unused mobile phones.

Mobile phones contain highly toxic elements and can create a longterm pollution risk if dumped in landfill.

While 90 per cent of the materials within a mobile phone can be recycled, about 70 per cent of Australians have at least one old mobile phone lying unused in a cupboard or drawer at home or in the office.

Clean Up Australia already partners with the Aussie Recycling Program (ARP) and all profits achieved from the recycling of mobile phones at McDonald’s Booval for one week from Sunday will help to raise money for Clean Up Australia.

McDonald’s Australia is encouraging the community to get involved.