By Callum Ludwig
17-year-old Seville resident Lachlan Hudak has been hard at work sharing the important message of sustainability and has been announced as one of Yarra Ranges Council’s Young Environmental Achievers in their Community Awards.
Lachlan is a Sustainability Captain at Lilydale Heights College and spent 2023 working hard to organise events and opportunities for his peers to learn more about sustainability.
Lachlan said he has been pushing sustainability knowledge and actions to students and trying to make it more available for everyone
“It makes it more engaging for people to participate in sustainable practices and it makes it more enjoyable, and the activities also can make people realise it’s actually not that hard to do sustainable things,” he said.
“These minor actions can have major benefits later on.”
Some of the activities Lachlan has shared with his school have included a bottle top
collection competition for the school houses to compete against each other in, developing a sustainability lesson for Sustainability Week and organising a Sustainability in Art competition.
Lachlan said he is very thankful to Lilydale Heights and Yarra Ranges Council for supporting him.
“Lilydale Heights College has been supportive and have an amazing sustainability team who are all passionate about sustainability,” he said.
“Everyone who supports and participates in sustainability contributes to something that we all need to do, and all the support has just made it easier for me to make it more enjoyable and entertaining for people to participate in sustainable practices.”
To help raise awareness, Lachlan designed a video explaining the circular economy during National Recycling Week and participated in an IDLE Off data collection with students from Monash University and the Eastern Alliance for Sustainable Learning (EASL), where he helped gather data on cars idling in school pick up areas, with their findings hoping to highlight the health impacts of exhaust emissions on children’s health.
Lachlan also represented Lilydale Heights College at the Resource Smart Schools Awards in June 2023, where it was awarded Curriculum Leadership School of the Year for Secondary Schools.
