Waihī Beach School is celebrating a national win after a huge year of hard mahi/work on environmental and sustainable projects.

It has been rewarded for its efforts by taking the top spot in the Sustainable Schools award for primary schools as part of the Keep NZ Beautiful Awards 2023.

The coveted national award seeks to celebrate environmental and sustainable excellence.

The school was nominated for the award this year in collaboration with Live Well Waihī Beach and subsequently found out last Monday that they had won the top spot for the NZ primary school category.

The Beautiful Awards are New Zealand’s longest-running national sustainability awards and provide a benchmark for environmental excellence.

Run annually since 1972, the awards inspire, recognise and acknowledge those individuals, schools, community groups, towns and cities working passionately to Keep New Zealand Beautiful.

“We have seen a lot of determination and confidence from the tamariki with this year's kaupapa/projects, coupled with our amazing staff enabling and supporting the mahi/work,” says principal Rachael Coll.

“We have had kaitiaki team members joining in from ages 5 - 11 making this such a success, with an all-embracing approach to our sustainable and environmental challenges. I am proud of our ngā rangatira mō āpōpō/leaders of tomorrow who have been working collectively to share this important message.”

The projects have been wide-ranging allowing for a varied community audience and involvement, such as He Oranga Taiao, He Oranga Tangata/Predator Free Bowentown, which has also been driven by hapū, Te Whānau a Tauwhao.

This piece of work started with the tamariki trapping rats, hedgehogs and mustelids which provided evidence for the biggest piece of coordinated predator-free work Waihī Beach has seen.

Kura kaitiaki possum trapping team A.

The school have a dedicated possum trapping team who are part of the volunteer network and work tirelessly to see the natives return to Bowentown.

The Kaitiaki Litter Citizen Scientists clean ‘Waihī Beach Beautiful’ and every three months, come rain, hail or shine, they undertake a fully audited beach clean with the data collected uploaded onto the Sustainable Coastlines Litter Intelligence database.

The school not only supports Sustainable Coastlines, but student leaders embrace and support Sustainable Waihī Beach’s efforts with organised beach cleans, and help educate the community and visitors on making a difference by picking up litter along our coastline.

As part of the awards submission, the students created a short film.

Director Beau Wilson, 10, says it’s hard to capture all the projects undertaken — from amazing predator-free work, to the community Pā Harakeke an their dotterel monitoring — “we chose a couple of really good pieces of work and focused on them”.

Beau says they also wanted to celebrate the school winning the Resene Paint New Zealand Beautiful Award for the best nature mural, which looks at protecting waterways — “it is so cool”.

A Sustainable Waihī Beach spokesperson says the amount of work over the past 12 months the children have put in has been phenomenal and the award is a well-deserved recognition of their hard work.

The awards ceremony is to be held in Wellington at Parliament House on Thursday, November 9, 2023.

Due to the cost involved, the school is seeking alternatives to attending the awards.