On Wednesday 6 May 2016 the Year 4 students headed off to the Red Hill Waste Management Facility.
We met our guide, Bronwyn, at the gate and toured the site on the bus. The students watched the rubbish trucks being weighed as they entered and departed the facility, they had to drive through a water trap before they could leave so that their tyres were clean of rubbish.
We went to the recycling sorting yard where batteries, aluminium cans, glass, paper, cardboard and mattresses were sorted into bins, and watched people unload their trailers into huge bins, ready to be sorted. The bus drove past a completed landfill site that had black pipes sticking up out of the ground. These pipes collected methane gas from the rotting rubbish which is sent to the power plant to be converted into electricity.
There was an area where green waste was dumped, a tractor was turning over the green waste so that the piles could be aerated and not get too hot inside. At the landfill site we watched trucks dumping rubbish and a huge tractor driving over the rubbish to squash it.
After a break for some refreshments, the classes split into groups and spent some time doing activities on recycling and sustainability, and made magnets out of recycled laminex tiles. The Year 4 students enjoyed their excursion and learned many new things. Thank you to the parents who came and helped with the excursion.
Mrs Marjan Rees
Year 4 Teacher
