Green Schools

Teachers, parents, students and friends,
On Tuesday 20th October I met Claire Hinch; the assistant environmental awareness officer. On Wednesday I attended a Green Schools Seminar in Tallaght. During these meetings we discussed the establishment of a more dynamic Green Schools Committee in our school. I outlined the various activities and ideas which we have implemented in our school to date and through discussions feel that I have acquired a greater understanding of how Green Schools Committees are organised and run in other schools.
First we discussed the establishment of a Green Schools Committee. It was suggested that at least one child from each class should make up the committee. It was emphacised that it is extremely important that there is student involvement in the Green Schools cause as ' it is with their support and enthusiasm that a Green Schools Committee can make a difference'. It was recommended that the committee be made up of any other interested adults including teachers, caretakers,parents, grandparents or friends.
*If anybody is particularily interested in environmental awareness or has any ideas/suggestions/advice to offer us please do not hesitate to contact me.
*Green Schools student re-elections shall take place after our mid-term break. Any of our current committee members who are interested in remaining are warmly welcomed.
Following this we discussed the identification of Environmental Issues within and around our school in an attempt to identify targets for action and improvement. It was suggested that we interview our school caretakers to acquire from them an estimate of the amount of rubbish which is currently going to the landfill from our school. The idea would be to reduce, re-use and recycle as much of this waste as possible thus bringing down our schools waste costs and reducing our carbon number. Upon our committees establishment we shall distribute questionnaires to teachers enquiring about the waste disposal system in their individual classrooms. One request which we shall put to teachers for the future would be to do more back to back photocopying. At present I am aware that many teachers are already attempting to do this however our photocopier frequently mis-feeds when performing the action. This is something which definitely needs to be addressed. Another issue to be tackled is the disposal of lunch waste. At present the children are being requested to use a lunch-box to hold their lunch (thus reducing the amount of packaging used; cling film, tin-foil etc) they are also being asked to bring home thier lunch waste (yogurt cartons,sandwich crusts, apple cores etc) . As Green Schools co-ordinator I have been undergoing weekly inspections of classroom rubbish bins, whilst many children are implementing our lunch rules many are not, this is another issue which our Green Schools Committee shall attempt to tackle. One suggestion which was offered by Claire was to establish a tidy classroom competition within our school where the Green Schools Committee members shall do spot check son each classroom daily/weekly and award them points based on a traffic lights system. All of this shall be discussed when our committee members are appointed and our first meeting takes place.
Martha Wilson (Senior Infants Teacher,Green School's Coordinator)