2013 Winners

Announcement of the winners of $10,000 National Schools Competition the centrepiece of National Recycling Week (11 – 17 November)

“Recycling only works, if you buy ‘Recycled’ too!”

We all know we need to recycle, but what’s the point if companies don’t use it! History says they won’t do that unless your message captures the attention of all the stakeholders you wish to influence.

Phil Enright, National Coordinator of the Australian Recycled Cartonboard National Schools Competition said, “It is ironic, that this, the last year of the Competition has produced an entry that engaged with its own and the wider community on a scale not seen before in any previous winning entry – our last 2 Prime Ministers, some of our highest profile sporting teams, and consumers across the planet from the Eifel Tower in France to Disneyland. Gol Gol Public School sought to persuade all ‘stakeholders’ with their engaging posters and jingle.”

It is not possible to estimate the numbers impacted. They produced posters distributed beyond their community to the world at large, identifying the manufacturers who buy recycled.

Gol Gol Public produced a range of extraordinary communications and engagements with all spheres of influence in their communities – consumer, government, community/not for profit organisations and the media. And they did not let up!

Enright commented, “For the 19 years the Competition has run, it has made a difference ….. proven by industry now also using recycled steel (44%) aluminum (64%) and some plastic (21%) and glass (35%) packaging.

“Switching to Australian recycled packaging not only promotes recycling and saves Australian jobs, it also takes away the market for ‘wood chip’ fibre taken from High Conservation Value Forests, the habitat of many endangered species.

“But is hasn’t been enough. The long term high Aussie dollar, and continued long term indifference to its impact on Australian manufacturing industry by governments of both persuasions, has seen this manufacturing sector close altogether. The packaging sector has been hard hit. We recently saw Australia’s only manufacturer of food grade steel plate close. Amcor was Australia’s only manufacturer of recycled cartonboard.”

Enright went on to say, “None-the –less, the achievement of the students is exceptional. The creativity and scale of their entries to effectively communicate the key messages was beyond that of many professionals. The commitment of schools like our winners of this last year’s Competition, Gol Gol Public School and their dedicated teacher, Janelle Lee, is essential to sustain community pressure to keep industry expanding its use of recycled waste in the packaging they use.

“It is with great pleasure, as well as the $10,000 cheque for the winning school, in this our last year we were again able to meaningfully acknowledge the extraordinary
contributions of teachers such as Janelle, with a $2,500 Grant for Professional Development.”

In making the announcement, Enright observed, “Again it shows any school can win on the national stage, and regional primary schools and their communities usually produce the most outstanding outcomes in any competition involving their communities.

“These students had to compete against all the highly resourced private and metropolitan secondary schools across Australia. They again demonstrated that there is no substitute for the kind of community commitment we see every day in regional Australia.”

The Competition was judged on essentially 3 criteria;

Communicating the message that ‘Recycling only works, if you buy recycled too!’
The creativity achieved in communicating the message and,
The extent to which the students engage their community to communicate the message