School Eco Council news

At Hernhill we have a School Eco Council. This group of councillors from Years 1 to 6, alongside Mrs Clapp, worked incredibly hard last year focusing on becoming an Eco School.

Eco-Schools is a global initiative that empowers pupils to lead environmental change within their school. After a year’s hard work in July 2018, we were delighted to have achieved the Bronze Award. 

This year we are aiming even higher…. The Green Flag. The Eco-Schools Green Flag is an internationally recognised award for excellence in environmental action and learning. Our newly elected group of councillors for 2018-19 have started this year with a real passion and have already launched a number of initiatives.

One

Initiative number one is that our school is now registered as a Public Drop-Off Location for the Colgate Oral Care Recycling Programme. We can accept any brand of toothpaste tubes and caps, toothbrush outer packaging, toothpaste cartons, electric and battery toothbrush heads and any brand of toothbrush. Please do drop off any of the above items during school hours. Thank you.

 Two

The second initiative is getting our children and families to dispose of their plastic waste in an Ecobrick rather than their rubbish bin. https://www.ecobricks.org An Ecobrick is a reusable building block created by packing clean and dry used plastic into a plastic bottle to a set density. A good minimum density is 0.33 g/ml. This means that a 600ml bottle will have a minimum weight of 200 grams and a 1500ml bottle will have a minimum weight of 500 grams.  While we appreciate that Ecobricks do not solve the plastic pollution problem across the world, they do raise awareness of the plastic used within a household and enable us to take personal responsibility for our plastic waste. We are asking families to become more aware of the single use plastic in their household by making Ecobricks. We hope to collect completed Ecobricks from now up until around March next year and then we will build some small items, such as flowerbeds and outdoor stools. Feel free to join in – it will certainly open your eyes to how much plastic you throw away! To find out how to make your first Ecobrick go to https://www.ecobricks.org/how/

While we may only be one school in a big wide world, every little action we take will help towards protecting our planet. As the Native American Proverb states “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors—we borrow it from our children.”