Over the 2005/06 Christmas school holiday break, GBG successfully installed the first school based K.E.W.T. system at the Greenbank State School site.

In March 2009 GBG successfully converted the EPA license for this installation to an EPA63(1) with no release of contaminants to the environment.

With over 1150 students and staff, this school had no sewerage and relied on regular “pump outs” to dump the waste at the nearest Sewerage Treatment Plant (STP) for treatment to an acceptable standard before being released back into our waterways.

The staff at Greenbank believed there were better ways to treat and dispose of effluent and they lobbied the government to have the K.E.W.T. system installed.

The benefits to the school and to the environment are phenomenal. The annual cost of pump outs (approx. $85,000.00) will be recouped within 5 years. More than 400 plants and shrubs have been planted at the school to feed the system. In addition, GBG planted 200 cabinet timbers as a buffer between the top and bottom ovals and also for future harvesting, originally using approx. 30% of the recycled water through subsurface drip.

The irrigation to the cabinet timber plantation ceased in 2008 as the system matured.

Probably the most rewarding outcome from the installation of the K.E.W.T. system has been the educational value. In conjunction with staff at Greenbank State School and Central Qld. University, GBG wrote a curriculum for the students to learn more about recycling waste.

This is a world first to have a curriculum written for Primary School students explaining the workings and benefits to the environment of the school’s sewerage treatment and disposal system. “A living resource as well as a learning resource”!