Little Litter – Reducing Waste At Our School

Alice, Hazel, Sophie and the other Global Citizenship Student Ambassadors

Grade 6 Students at Kingsville Primary School

Contact: Jeff McDonald (jeff.mcdonald@education.vic.gov.au)

“Change is like eating an elephant: you have to take one bite at a time. But once you're done, you feel like you’ve accomplished something phenomenal.” William H

Little Litter Logo

In 2023, seven of us - Alice, Aizah, Hazel, Sophie, Willy, Austin and Violet - became the original Meg Languages Global Citizenship Student Ambassadors at Kingsville Primary School (KPS) in Melbourne’s inner western suburbs.

As Student Ambassadors and Global Citizens, we created an ongoing project called Little Litter. Read on to find out the story of KPS, Cruickshank Park, the Little Litter project and how we just recently presented all our great work at the National Education Summit Conference in Melbourne!

“I wanted to be a part of this project because I wanted to fix a big problem in school: pollution. We had done nude food days where you had to not bring wrappers and put your snack, fruit and lunch in your lunch box and not in the bin if you don’t like it.” Austin B

Kingsville Students Participating in the GCAP

At the start of 2023 we joined the Global Citizenships Ambassador Program (GCAP), a global citizenship program that focuses on taking action for environmental or social justice. It was a fantastic opportunity to use and develop cooperation and teamwork as we worked together to change our community. Our main thought going into the project was: “No matter what we do, we can make a difference in our school.” Over the course of the project, we discovered that change can come from small things and, if a handful of Year 5 students can improve the environment of a park, perhaps we can change the whole world! But change doesn't come easily, as we learnt during our project.  

“We can do incredible things if we just start small.” Violet F

The Little Litter Project

Little Litter began as an idea as we brainstormed the problems we saw in our own school and local community. We chose to take action in Cruickshank Park because we wanted to make a real difference in our local environment. We decided to focus on litter because Cruickshank Park is a place that many of us, and our school community, use regularly. We realised the litter from our school was directly having an impact on the park, and we wanted to change that.

Map of local area showing project location

A big part of the project and our learning was about student voice and agency. We made sure we had voice and agency in what we did: we made the decisions together about what we wanted to focus on for our project. We also made all the choices about how we wanted to work together to solve the problem of litter in KPS and Cruickshank Park. We didn’t do it all alone: we had help from our families, the teachers and Lottie (the GCAP program facilitator), but we were the ones driving the Little Litter project.

“This project has taught us life lessons that changed our perspectives. We have developed our skills, in particular, taking on responsibilities.” Alice K

We used the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Good Life Goals, when planning our solutions for Little Litter. The Good Life Goals are a simpler version of the SDGs, which we thought would be better as we were working with fellow primary students.

Lottie helped us understand the goals, and we narrowed our focus in our project down to five Good Life Goals:

• Number 4: Learn and teach

• Number 11: Love where you live

• Number 14: Clean our seas

• Number 15: Love nature

• Number 17: Come together

With these goals in mind, we decided to educate our school community about the problem of litter in the park.

Brainstorming Session

The term Little Litter came to mind when we thought about all the tons of rubbish in Cruikshank Park and how students could never get rid of all the rubbish in one year, but we could definitely make a difference in Cruikshank and Stony Creek. We decided on the name Little Litter because there’s never going to be no litter in the park (or the world) but we could minimise the amount of litter, thus Little Litter.

Inspired by a past involvement with a park ranger in Cruickshank Park, we created and ran engaging activities like scavenger hunts for younger students. We also designed presentations and lessons to teach different grades about the importance of keeping Cruickshank Park clean. To share our message and educate the community, we did lots of things such as creating posters and websites, sharing information at assemblies, and creating surveys and questions to spread awareness to the parent community of the school.

To help us take action, we ‘became the teachers’ and helped the students at our school understand more about Cruickshank Park. We planned this by dividing the school’s different age groups across the seven of us. We modified our presentations and lessons for the different levels. For younger students we used the Good Life Goals to discuss what we were trying to do, and created scavenger hunts. With the help of our teacher, we made a timetable for every class to go for a walk with us in Cruickshank Park and have a lesson with us there. We checked students' understanding after the lessons and noted any follow up actions they wanted to do. Lots of students took action after this, based on their new knowledge. We could see how grateful and engaged the younger students were.

Little Litter Poster

To educate the families of Kingsville Primary and spread awareness, we used Digital Storytelling tools. We had a real purpose to create content to help get our messages out.

‘During the project, especially during digital storytelling, we faced a lot of trial and error, but used our mistakes to improve our work, as a team.’ Hazel M

We learnt how to make a website with the help of our community. There were some tricky parts to making a website. Making all the buttons work took some coding knowledge. We also designed a Little Litter logo, and used it on posters and t-shirts. This was a new experience, and trying to make it simple, aesthetically pleasing and for it to link to our project took a bit of work.

 “Believing in yourself is all it takes to be a good a leader” Aizah F

Kingsville students participating in scavenger hunts

One of the best parts of our project was taking classes into Cruickshank Park after our presentations. It was rewarding to see students become more aware and caring towards the park. Our project created a ripple effect of awareness and action. We enjoyed designing our Little Litter logo, creating digital content, and being the teachers for younger students. This experience improved our public speaking and helped us connect with other students.  

“The Global Citizenships Student Ambassador program shows that anyone can do anything; all you need is perseverance” Sophie M

National Education Conference

We were invited to share our work and journey at the National Education Conference: Classrooms of the Future in May 2024. We all loved the experience, and wanted to share our personal reflections about it with you:

Willy: The National Education Summit conference was an enjoyable experience giving us, as students, a taste of the media of sorts. I thought it was one of the best experiences I've ever had and, with such a supportive group of peers around me, it was easy to relax and have fun.

Austin: The conference was different to what I thought it would be like, but the atmosphere and the pressure was huge. It was one of my best experiences that I've had. Everyone was so supportive. Before, I was quite stressed and nervous but when I got on stage, all of the nerves were gone. I'll say it again: I really enjoyed the experience of going to the city and presenting in front of 20 to 30 people.

Hazel: The conference was a unique opportunity that I enjoyed immensely. It was amazing to enjoy such an experience with a great group of peers. It taught us skills that would further help us when presenting, and it was a day that we would never forget. We faced our fair share of challenges but that just made the whole experience way more enjoyable and interesting.

Aizah: So we went to the National Education Summit Conference and presented our project. We each had lines about different sections of the Little Litter project. It was really fun and great how we got to share our hard work and what we had done. For me it was one of the most enjoyable and great experiences and a good chance to express the things we did that would inspire other people to help their own communities.

Alice: After our project concluded, Lottie invited us to an Education Summit to teach educators about how they can help their students become young changemakers. We acted as an example that great things can start with a bunch of immature Grade 5s wanting to make change. We did, in fact, start as some immature, silly Grade 5s, but now  we are immature, silly, confident Grade 6s who have just presented at an Education Conference! I felt supported and encouraged to be myself and I expressed that through how I confidently presented my speech.

Sophie: Going to the National Education Conference was very different to what I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be loud, fun, big and overwhelming but it turned out to be everything but overwhelming and we met Amelia Moseley!