Who Are We?
The ECO club works with Mrs Morley and includes pupils from every year group. We also have an Eco members on the School Council, who work hard to make sure our school is environmentally friendly. We are committed to encouraging whole school action to improve our school.
What are we doing?
Waste Week
We worked hard during Waste Week to help everyone in the school understand how we can reduce, reuse and recycle our rubbish. The Eco Committee shared their drama with the school, with a dustbin lady who would rather not have any rubbish in her bag! Our Waste Busting Superhero competition had lots of imaginative entries, and now everyone is being a bit more careful about what we throw in the bin.
What's Under Your Feet?
Update - We completed the survey again in March, and entered our results into the national database. This time we found nearly 50 worms, and a lot of very surprised ants.
As part of our biodiversity work, we are taking part in the national campaign to help scientists at the British Trust for Ornithology understand how the number of bugs within the soil affects birds. We had to dig up a square of grass, count all the grubs we could find within it and send our information back to the scientists. We measured our worms as best we could - they just wouldn't stop wiggling! We also weighed all the worms and found we had collected 8 grammes. We'll be repeating our investigations in the spring and summer.
Environmental Review
Our first job was to make an environmental review of the school, looking at topics such as energy, litter, waste, school grounds and healthy eating. We have decided to concentrate on the topics of energy, waste and biodiversity.
We have started our energy topic by reading the electricity meter in school so that we can track our usage. We encouraging everyone to turn the lights off when there is no-one in the classroom, and making some surprise checks to make sure they have.
Meanwhile, we have started our waste topic by making recycling boxes for the PTA barbeque, and selling unwanted school uniform. We are now composting all our fruit peel and cores and, of course, we will be making sure we continue our good work recycling paper and cardboard.
What is Eco Schools?
Eco schools is a programme for promoting environmental awareness. It is linked to most subjects in the curriculum, and will involve all children in cross curricular areas such as Citizenship and Health Education.
The different stages are:
Over the past few months we have been working towards becoming an Eco School. There are 3 different levels of Eco School and we are aiming to acheive the Green Flag award. Please see below the different stages and all that we have to do to complete.
Bronze award criteria:
- The school has an Eco-Committee consisting of pupils and adults
- The group meets at least once every term
- Records are kept of meetings
- The Eco-Committee has completed an Environmental Review covering the Eco-Schools nine topics
- Results of the review have been discussed by the Eco-Committee
- The Eco-Committee has produced a basic Action Plan influenced by the Environmental Review and shared the plan with the rest of the school community
- The Eco-Committee can identify progress towards achieving elements of the Action Plan
- The school can indicate that environmental issues have been covered within curriculum work
Involving the whole school and wider community
- The school has a prominent, designated notice board, detailing Eco-Schools activities
Silver Award criteria:
- The school has identified an Eco-Committee consisting of pupils and adults which meets at least once every half term
- Pupils share the responsibility with adults for running the committee (the level of responsibility expected depends on the age and ability of the pupils involved)
- The Eco-Committee includes a parent and/or governor representative
- Records are kept of meetings
- The Eco-Committee has completed an Environmental Review covering the Eco-Schools nine topics
- Results of the review have been discussed by the Eco-Committee and communicated with the whole school
- The Eco-Committee has produced a detailed Action Plan
- The plan contains timescales, targets and who is responsible
- The Eco-Committee has shared the plan with the rest of the school
- The school can indicate that some environmental issues have been covered within curriculum work in most year groups
- The school has a prominent, designated notice board, detailing Eco-Schools activities
- The Eco-Committee regularly communicates Eco-Schools activities to the whole school and wider community (eg. via assemblies and newsletters)
- The Eco-Committee monitors the effectiveness of Eco-Schools work (eg. via data collection, before and after photographs etc)
- The school has an agreed, adopted and displayed Eco-Code
- The school has completed in-depth work on at least one of the Eco-Schools nine topics
Green Flag award criteria;
Eco-Committee
- The school has an Eco-Committee that meets at least once every half term
- Pupils take significant responsibility for running the committee (the level of responsibility expected depends on the age and ability of the pupils involved)
- The Eco-Committee includes a parent and/or governor representative
- The Eco-Committee has completed an Environmental Review covering the Eco-Schools nine topics and green procurement policy topics
- The results have been recorded
- Pupils were involved in carrying out the review
- Results of the review have been discussed by the Eco-Committee and communicated with the whole school
- The review must be completed at least once every two years, but ideally should be completed every school year, to enable the Eco-Committee to do follow-up reviews to see the progress your school has made.
- The Eco-Committee has produced a detailed Action Plan
- The plan contains timescales, who is responsible and how eco work will be monitored and evaluated
- The plan should contain development of any policies made that cover the nine topics, this should include a Green Procurement policy (A green procurement policy has been a requirement from January 2013)
- The Eco-Committee has shared the Action Plan with the rest of the school
- Sustainability has been covered in at least three curriculum areas by most year groups
Involving the whole school and wider community
- The school has a prominent, designated notice board, detailing Eco-Schools activities
- The Eco-Committee regularly communicates Eco-Schools activities to the whole school and wider community (eg. via assemblies and newsletters)
- The school has shared good practice with other schools who wish to join the Eco-Schools programme or who are already engaged in the programme
- The school shares good practice and supports others within their Eco-Community (eg. local Eco-Centres and homes)
- Physical evidence has been collected of the school’s progress including data collection and analysis (graphs etc)
- Some monitoring data has been used in curriculum work
- The school has an agreed, adopted and displayed Eco-Code
- The Eco-Code is displayed on the Eco-Schools notice board and in all classrooms
- The Eco-Code is known and understood by the majority of pupils and staff
- The school for the first application has completed in-depth work on at least three of the Eco-Schools nine topics, one of which must be energy
- If you are renewing your Green Flag, you also must work on a further two Eco-Schools topics in-depth since you gained your last award. You should maintain and review (and develop as you see fit) your previous topics and record these in the action plan and on the application form.
We have conducted an annual enviromental review.
This looks at 10 main areas:
1.Litter
2.Waste Minimisation
3.Energy
4.Water
5.Transport
6. Health/ Well Being
7.School Grounds
8.Biodiversity
9. Food and the Environment
10. Sustaining our World
Our 2015-2016 action plan includes:
1.Whole school anti-litter campaign.
2. Recycling waste paper, card, aluminium cans and glass.
We'll let you know how we get on with this throughout the year...