The Green Innovation Awards held at the Southern Cross University (SCU) Whitebrook Theatre yesterday, brought together the finalists from over 200 schools in the region, across all 7 Local Government Areas (LGAs) for judging their environmental projects.

A poignant event on the back of Cop27 talks where poorer countries are seeking compensation from the globe's biggest Climate Change contributors, and Australia's largest plastic bag recycling operation, which has recycled our soft plastics for the last decade, comes to an end.

There were 8 finalist teams in the Whitebrook Theatre, with 5 Primary Schools and 3 High schools coming together to pitch their innovative, regenerative ideas for a green future, a future of hope with solutions to combat waste, climate change, including the subsequent weather events and the environment.

The students and their teachers used a wide array of audio-visual, acting, and presentation techniques to show off their innovative ideas. 

Image: Dunoon Public School Team Bush Babies

Two Lismore LGA Primary Schools - Tregeagle and Dunoon were featured as Primary Finalists, and we got the scoop straight from the team on their experience.

Dunoon Public School had two teams enter, the first tackling fast fashion was called Wearables and the second named Bush Babies used Indigenous knowledge and local bushfoods to create a healthy, localised alternative to baby food. The Wearables team won the Primary competition!

Winners of the High School competition were St Pauls, Kempsey with their very creatively presented, Bottles and Baskets.

Image: Tregeagle Public School- Team Sustainable Picnic

Worth mentioning were Kingscliff with their 'Floating House' project, which they successfully created a formula to measure the number of recycled plastic drums (or alternatively an air pillow) that would be required to float a Queenslander in a flood disaster.

Tregeagle Public School's design - Sustainable Picnic, was an app that allowed people to find ways to create their very own sustainable picnic, by accessing the information from sustainable brands that the students researched. The team are hoping to get their App on the App Store, for members of the community to download soon.

The Green Innovation Awards, a not-for-profit organisation that has been running the environmental competition for local Northern Rivers Primary and High School students since 2018, has over the past 5 years had hundreds of local students involved in the awards, sharing their green innovations and inspiring the local community.

Image: The 2022 Judges watching the presentations carefully, ready with challenging and well-informed questions, along with lots of praise for the 2022 finalists

The judges this year consisted of Professor Nicholas Ashbolt, Dean of the School of Environment, Science and Engineering at SCU, Professor Amanda Reichelt-Brushett Vice President of the Asia Pacific Chapter of the Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry, Jill McCall the Regional Industry Education Partnerships Senior Project Officer for the North Coast, Kirralee Donovan the Water and Sustainability Officer at Rous County Council and Bruce Parry who is on the Sustainability Committee at Summerland Credit Union.

During Covid, the awards were all submitted via video and so Corinne Carter from Tregeagle told us "it's great to see the kids back up on stage presenting, the kids in my class were all very quiet and reserved, but seeing how they presented on such a big stage and spoke to the media, was great, they are all so confident and excited to speak about their experience."

The vision for the awards is to:

• INSPIRE students to develop a lifelong passion for green innovation.
• CONNECT and strengthen local community.
• EMPOWER young people to believe that they can make a difference.

The kids we spoke to today were definitely inspired, and spoke about their empowerment at home, and within their local and school communities.

Eli from the winning school, Dunoon said "it felt good thinking that you were going to make a change" about his experience from the project, where the students and their teachers create from concept to finished product, and then conceptualise and plan the marketing and product development to market.

Oriel said "fast fashion is bad for the environment because bits of clothes are made with bad fabrics, and aren't good for the environment"

Willow M said "my family changed their fast fashion" from the project and in regards to their experience, Liam from Tregeagle said, "it was fun, it took a lot of time to get the research in, but it was fun and we had a good time."

Ella from Tregeagle said, "when we did experiments, I remember going home and being really proud of what we did that day and being unable to stop talking about how fun it was, and how much we were actually getting done, the fails and also, what we achieved."

"At home, we are more careful about what we are recycling."

Hamlet's family created a spoon from an old favourite recipe, which had spice and flavour, and then brought curry in for the team to try their edible spoons. She laughed about how the family first experimented with self-raising flour, and the spoons became big and puffy, but then spoke about the refinement process, and the group cohesion between the kids and their teacher is palpable, especially given they only spend 2hrs a week in her enrichment program!

Leilani said she was shaking and was nervous about going first, up on stage, worried she wouldn't "do it right" but then with a huge grin, responds to our question "how did it go, will you do it again?" with a Good! and Yes!.

The unanimous feedback about their experience was a resolute "it was awesome!"

The event was sponsored by Southern Cross University, Summerland Credit Union, Rous County Council, NRCF and The Northern Rivers Times.