What a wonderful half term we have had back in school! Despite Eco-meetings still having to be held socially distanced the members have persevered to make changes to care for the place our School takes upon the planet. Eco-Committee wouldn’t run without Mrs Scott’s help – thank you!
This half term the Eco-Committee have:
Launched a sunflower competition with the support of Morrison’s in Malton. Nature’s top pollinators are bees, and sunflowers’ showy outer petals draw many different species, including honeybees and bumble bees, to the high-quality nectar. The bees are quite likely to pollinate other plants during their stay. The pretty flowers also bring birds to eat the sunflower seeds. Not only do wild birds add song and movement to a garden, but they also polish off a few insects while they are there, insects that might otherwise hurt your crops. Sunflower seeds can limit weeds. Their seeds contain a chemical that other plants don’t like.
Secured a paper recycling box for every classroom and arranged for the Council to collect paper separately from the school: Eco-committee representatives enjoy taking the boxes down to Mrs Scott and Reception who insures everything is correctly recycled. Thank you Mrs Scott!
Formed a litter picking duty: every day different Eco-representatives spend five minutes ensuring there is no rubbish to pollute our part of the planet on the school grounds.
Launched an initiative to reduce single use plastic in lunch boxes and snack wrappings: We have organised a wrapper count and have then asked every teacher to set a homework to consider avoiding single use wrappings. After half term we will undertake a second wrapper count and see if there has been any improvement!
Started plastic recycling in School: only last week Malton Council delivered two bins so that plastic bottles can be recycled from our School.
Formed a Garden Club: the garden club meets weekly on a lunchtime and every week more children join having seen the fun we are having! They have cleared out and re-planted three large containers in the playground. Thank you to everyone who donated seeds for those pots: we are excited to see what will grow. We have another project already lined up; hoping to draw in more wildlife and make our part of the planet prettier to be in.
Started planting trees every time we search online: the school has now adopted the Ecosia website as our default search engine. Ecosia promote themselves as an eco-friendly search engine and donate their advertising revenue to planting trees.
Our focus next half term will be to maintain all these initiatives, monitor our use of single use plastic and try to reduce engine idling outside School.