The students at the Rohrbach vocational school save energy, waste and sugar. Even before all pandemic restrictions, earlier years of the BS Rohrbach demonstrated under the “Fridays for Future” banner in the district town. In 2019, the student representatives announced that they would ban PET bottles from schools in the future.
Now the last vending machine with PET bottles has actually been picked up from the vocational school. There are water dispensers and fruit juices instead of cola and heavily sugared drinks. These should encourage conscious drinking without disposable plastic and at the same time be beneficial to health.
“We motivate our students, but also our teachers and employees, to consciously use their refillable drinking bottles,” says school director Christiana Miller. This week the project was completed – finally mask-free – together with the team around Barbara Gahleitner, Heike Gillesberger and Heinz Reischl as well as the students.
In the school and also in the associated boarding school, water dispensers with chilled water are available free of charge in three places. There is tap water both still and carbonated. In the dining room there is a vending machine with fruit juice concentrate from Upper Austria. Six varieties are offered. Cherry and iced tea peach are currently very popular. The machine works like a continuous flow cooler and thus also saves energy compared to previous bottle machines.
Garbage bags saved
But the original purpose of saving waste was also achieved: the offer was well received by all groups involved in the vocational school. “We noticed in the first few weeks that we were saving a lot of rubbish,” says Heinz Reischl happily: “We used to have twelve garbage bags full of plastic bottles a week. Now it’s only three.” In addition, the students also save money that they would otherwise have spent on drinks in plastic bottles. The drinking bottles with the vocational school logo can be refilled much more cheaply than the PET drinks bottle supply used to be.
“PET bottles out of the school may be a drop in the ocean, but every drop gives hope. Our students are highly motivated to make a contribution to protecting the environment,” said Principal Miller at the final day of action. The completion of the project on the last day before the change of course was appropriately celebrated with an afternoon of action. Nutrition and lifestyle coach Christian Putscher, who many know from local television LT1, was a guest. He told his listeners the way to a “finally normal” life.
Source: Nachrichten
