Eco-committee 2011/12

Since the start of this academic year, we've been working very hard in an attempt to get everyone in the school to be more eco-friendly. The first real problem we encountered was attempting to encourage hundreds of teenage girls to start caring about their recycling with the introduction of the notorious eco-bin.

Surprisingly they have actually been a success! We're recycling more than ever before, and everyone seems to have embraced the idea.

We had other causes to celebrate this year with our achievement of the bronze and silver eco-schools awards for making the school a greener, more sustainable working environment. Over the past year, we had to implement our own eco-code, created a colourful notice board with our 'eco-tree' covered in student-decorated leaves and got involved with several other organisations.

From the two clothes collections that students took part in, we managed to raise just under £1000 to improve the school grounds, and we felt just like little children waiting for Santa to arrive when the lorry turned up to collect the bags! We would like to  thank everyone who gave clothing to the students. We've just booked another collection for mid March 2012 and hope that everyone will take part. Maybe it's time to have a clear out of your wardrobe to help the eco-committee?

Last month, we took part in Switching on to Switching Off, an interactive activity where, as a school, we had to focus on reducing the amount of energy we use by leaving lights on around the school. With the help of the entire school, we managed to reduce our energy intake by a massive 40% and won a gold medal for all our hard work.

We hope to continue to spread awareness of eco-friendliness to the entire school community in the next year, and we appreciate all of your support over the last year.
From
Hannah Ramshaw and Verity Peake
Heads of the eco-committee