Ryan Road Childcare and Swim School taking climate action


Friday 21 April, 2023

Ryan Road Childcare and Swim School has been a dedicated member of the Achievement Program since joining in 2017. The service has been recognised for all six health priority areas, with their final recognition being awarded in 2020 for Mental Health and Wellbeing. Reflecting on their ongoing commitment to the program, Ryan Road Childcare and Swim School has undertaken the Climate and Health pathway and has been taking action to support the wellbeing of their community and our planet.

 

Reduce waste

The service has pledged to reduce waste and implemented several sustainable programs and actions. These include:

  • Limiting the amount of printing - the service is providing more information for families via online platforms.
  • Membership to the Reverse Art Truck recycling program, which promotes creative re-use of resources, to help reduce the amount of waste within their community while supporting creative and playful education
  • Supporting the ‘Bread Tags for Wheelchairs’ program which reduces the number of bread tags being disposed of in our tips; they are collected at the service and shipped to a company that melts and reuses the markers to create wheelchairs for children.
  • Implementing a reduce, reuse, recycle program across the service, encouraging more sustainable resources for experiences, and introducing a waste storage tub in each room to reuse paper.

Since implementing these new changes, the service has noticed a difference in the amount of waste being thrown into the bins.

 

Increase active travel

The service’s location may limit on foot travel, but Ryan Road have still found ways to increase active play within their service. Last October they undertook a friendly challenge between rooms – points were awarded for each physical, mental and kind experience planned into weekly programs. They also registered a team for Black Dog Institute’s Walking solidarity challenge.

 

Connect with nature and eat more plants

To support children to connect with nature, the service provides several experiences including participating in National Tree Day, where the children are able to plant trees around the service grounds, and adding watering cans to reduce water waste after mealtimes. Other experiences involving natural materials have included exploring flowers, collecting leaves and mud painting.

 

After seeing the involvement and enjoyment of children with National Tree Day, the service created a new garden-to-kitchen program. This program supports children’s understanding of where food comes from and how to grow and nurture plants.

 

To support eating more plants, the service is also creating a new chef program to allow children to develop some in-room recipes encouraging children to eat and learn about healthy foods. Children have enjoyed being a part of the cooking process, and as a result are trying more fresh fruit and vegetables.

 

Use less energy and get climate-ready

To support the service to use less energy, Ryan Road Childcare and Swim School have updated labels to remind everyone to switch off lights when not in use and encourage conversations with children about saving power. The service has also adapted their menu to include days that do not involve using the oven.  Other fantastic initiatives implemented by the service include:

  • Including sustainable practice events to the services calendar of events to help educate staff, families and children. For example, they recently added Enviroweek to their calendar.
  • Creating a ‘horse bucket’ in the kitchen to help reduce the amount of peel and scraps being thrown away.
  • Purchasing a compost or worm farm to reduce the amount of waste and support the garden-to-kitchen program.

Jane Rowland, Service Director, says, “Working through the Climate and Health Pathway allowed us to reflect on practices already happening and embed these further. It was an opportunity to promote greater awareness towards climate change in the service as well as personally.”

 

 

Top tips for others

Ryan Road Childcare and Swim School has the following tips for organisations looking to get climate ready and reduce their carbon footprint:

  1. Reduce and reuse as much as possible.
  2. Wear warmer clothes instead of turning on the heat and open a window instead of turning on the fan.
  3. Gather information from events, including Enviroweek, to educate children and families in understanding climate change and encourage everyone to work together to find solutions.
  4. Consider increasing the number of outdoor walk programs to encourage more active experiences.