Eco Committee

The eco committee have been thinking about litter and how it is important to pick up litter.  They recently ran a competition to show the benefits of litter picking and were amazed with all the entries – it was very difficult to choose a winner.  After Easter, the eco committee will be going out to pick up some litter from the local area as part of the Great Big School Clean 2025.   We have started looking at how we can save water both at school (checking taps are turned off) and how we can save water at home which we will go into more detail.  We also hope to hold a fundraising bake sale for Water Aid.  Details are to be finalised.

Yesterday, the eco committee went on a trip to a centre that is able to turn our general waste into usable energy – electricity. We found out about the construction of the site, explored a diagram to understand the science behind how it works, participated in activities in the interactive museum and after putting our safety equipment on, went around the site and saw it in action. We found out a lot of interesting information that we can’t wait to share with you all but for now, did you know one grab of rubbish from their giant metal claw can provide enough electricity for 3 years in one property.

This term we have started and finished the  review for achieving the green flag again. We hope to get the results back soon. To keep the green flag, our school will have to do tasks to make it Eco friendly. 

Our next steps will be to pick 2 focuses for this year, such as: electricity usage, recycling, planting more to encourage nature into our outdoor space etc. We will also try to work on all the things we should have in our school such as bird houses and more bug hotels. All in all, our Eco reps are excited for a new year to unlock new possibilities.

In the month of November, we will be joining the Cut Your Carbon campaign, which will involve everyone’s support and participation. There will be more about this when we return to school.

Eco Committee

Welcome back to a new school year.

First, let’s thank the amazing Eco Committee from last year who worked so hard to make sure we kept our Green Flag award.

Second, welcome to the new Eco Committee who are extremely enthusiastic about how they can support the school in continuing their journey into being more eco-friendly. We met on Monday 30th September where we got to know each other and understand why each member wanted to be an Eco-rep, as well as some of the ideas they had for the year. I can already tell it is going to be an exciting year with lots of environmental learning along the way.

The Eco-reps will keep you updated on what we discuss and plan to do throughout the year, with Year 6 reps updating our blog after every meeting.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to share any thoughts or ideas of your own with your Eco-rep. They can always share them at our meetings.

Eco Committee

This year our focus was on saving energy and understanding more about waste. The Eco-Committee discussed a range of possible tasks and agreed on each class having an energy free lesson at some point during the day and a lesson all about waste.

When we got back together it was so wonderful to hear all about everyone’s day and the enjoyment that came from having screens and lights off for a whole lesson!

The energy free lesson had a positive impact for the school and the environment. We were able to use more of the energy produced by the solar panels and actually give more back to the grid. Below are graphs to show the impact, the first graph shows the results a week before Sustainable Day and the second shows the results on Sustainable Day.

Some of the waste activities included sorting waste correctly and understanding where the waste goes, creating posters about turning lights off or helping to save the ocean, writing stories/songs about issues within the world i.e. ice melting and sorting classroom stationary to identify how sustainable we are actually being!

The Eco-Committee also spoke to the catering manager about how they are trying to reduce waste and be more sustainable. Please see our display in the dinning room to find out the responses to our questions.

Welcome to our blog where we will tell you about some of our plans that we discussed in our recent meeting. We have been planning a sustainable day with an electricity free hour; by turning off lights and computers, checking the air con isn’t running and instead of using the smart boards we will use white boards. In assembly we will use a book to discuss ways of helping the environment. In the book, lots of animals are in a boy’s home. I wonder if you can think of why they might be there!

Yours sincerely the Year 6 eco reps (Phoebe and Cato).

Welcome to the Eco School blog,

Here we will talk about what we have discussed in the previous and upcoming events. We are dedicated to recycling and preserving energy in our most recent eco meeting and have discussed the upcoming sustainability day. Some of the ideas we discussed were: potentially having a competition to see which class can be the most sustainable and the winning class getting a prize, having an hour of no electricity or getting plants in every classroom. We will update the blog every eco meeting, so check regularly if that is something you are interested in.

From the Eco Council.

The eco committee has had a busy start to the new school year. Children applied to be on the committee and were voted in- the final group consists of Phoebe and Cato in Year 6, Vale and India from Year 5, Becky and Alex from 4, Edward and Nina from Year 3 and Poppy and Julie from Year 2.

We have discussed the current eco status of the school, the key points we want to focus on and what is important to us. The children have some excellent ideas and are very passionate about making changes! We have looked at what has previously been done and the effect on these actions on the school and children. The school currently has an Eco Schools Green Flag accreditation and we will be applying for that again this year. As a group, we have begun exploring  what we need to do for that and have already begun the application process. We have also discussed what is important to us and have created posters to encourage others to be more eco friendly in school.

Our next step is to do a review of the school and how efficiently it runs as an eco school. In our next meeting (10/01/24) we will begin reviewing the school and then will create an action plan.

We will be posting updates here to keep everyone informed.

Mrs Gardiner
Eco committee

Eco committee 2023-2024

Ideas for SustFest Schools/Youth Activities

A whole week or a few young people on one activity – it’s up to you how much you do for SustFest Schools Week but we’d love to have you on board each year!

• appreciating and protecting nature
• reduce / reuse / recycle
• climate change and climate justice

Debate and Discuss

• get the students to take the lead on what is important to them – student conferences, debates, strategy meetings and assemblies are all appropriate for older students to run

Grow/Eat Food

• dig over veg beds ready for planting
• plant seeds in newspaper pots
• build bug hotels
• plant a tree
• explore vegan cookery
• learn about sustainable fish

Energy

• monitor lights to see if they are switched off
• mount an anti-idling campaign aimed at parents

Nature

• explore a local park or nature area and find nature on your doorstep
• go on a bug hunt
• make pictures out of sticks and leaves
• leaf-rubbing
• bird-watching

Waste

• have a “waste free lunch” challenge and try to cut food waste for the week
• do a litter pick
• use both sides of paper
• read books on eco-subjects including Duffy the Sea Turtle or Hunter’s Icy Adventure and other books in the Wild Tribe series to learn about plastics and marine life

We went to the Church to visit Margaret today. Unfortunately it was too wet to spot any bees. We checked on the beans that we grew in the Autumn and amended the net , as they had grown so tall. We spotted potatoes, spinach and kale. We are looking forward to our next visit and we hope for better weather.