Did you know? We have a Sustainability Team populated by Year 6 students. The Sustainability Team presented a short video at last week’s assembly, drawing attention to our community garden. View it here!

Did you know? The Season of Creation commenced on 1 September.

One of the aspirations of Living Faith’s Strategic Drive is to ‘Pursue practices that are environmentally, financially and socially responsible’. Our intention through this aspiration is to be good stewards of God’s creation.

This aspiration has been coming to life behind the scenes for a number of years, now, and I take this opportunity to share just a handful of examples.

• The Terminal: The large shade structure at the Kiss-and-Go Zone is called The Terminal. The roof of this structure is made from a 100kW solar array. In the past 12 months, we have generated 105MWh and used 212MWh, thereby paying for just 107MWh. The result is a direct saving of $13,618 in actual consumption.
• Rainwater: We harvest rainwater for use in some toilet blocks. Not only does this result in a substantial saving on water rates, but it ensures less reliance on potable town water.
• Bores: Two on-site bores fill a 120,000L water tank, which is used to irrigate our oval. The saving on water rates is substantial and, once again, this set-up ensures less reliance on potable town water. Further, it means we can maintain a well-hydrated oval all year round.
• Magic Water: We use Aqueous Ozone - affectionately known as ‘magic water’ - in lieu of chemical cleaning products. We create the product onsite, with cartridges converting tap water into magic water. The product automatically converts back to pure water 24 hours later, and it’s non-toxic at all stages of conversion. This is an environmentally-sound solution that leaves no chemical residue on surfaces and limits the need for dangerous chemicals on site.

It is important to us that we pursue environmentally, financially and socially responsible practices at Living Faith and that we continually seek to build on these practices. These practices enable us to play our small but vital part in the sustainability of our precious planet while normalising and role modelling to students our intentional care for God’s creation.

Fifty easy ways that we can all care for creation are offered in this flier by St Matthew Catholic Church.

- Jane Mueller, Principal