St Clare's Primary School Harold's Cross Dublin 6W

Green Schools

We have been involved in the Green Schools programme for the last eleven years. We were one of the first schools to participate in the programme. Our school received its first green flag for reducing litter and waste in our school on June 25 2001.

Since then we have been awarded four more green flags under the following themes- energy, water, travel and biodiversity. We had to work very hard for two years on each theme to be awarded the flags.

Waste
We were awarded our first Green Flag for reducing our litter and waste. Firstly we established a green schools committee which consisted of pupils, staff and parents. The committee’s first initiative was to ban plastic bags in the school; every child was encouraged to bring a reusable lunch box instead. We also put in place a can bank for drinks cans; a recycling bin for cardboard, waste paper, newspaper and office paper, and a recycling bin for batteries. We also began to compost our food waste and recycle our milk cartons. In each classroom we placed a basket and a bucket for paper waste and composting. Children were assigned the job of collecting the waste at the end of the school day and putting it into the larger recycling bins. We continue to do all of these things daily in our school except for the can recycling as we aren’t allowed bring fizzy drinks to school, therefore we felt we no longer needed the can recycling bin. In those first two years we reduced our waste going to landfill by 50%.

Energy
We received our second green flag in 2003 for energy. We focused on educating ourselves and our parents at home about energy saving. We did lots of lessons on energy saving in class. We looked at various ways in which we could be more energy efficient in school and at home, such as keeping outside doors closed to keep the heat in, not leaving electrical equipment on standby, turning off lights when rooms aren’t in use, using CFL light bulbs, walking instead of talking the car. We sent out a questionnaire to parents which helped to increase their awareness of their own energy use.

In school we invited people to talkto us about energy saving and various classes also attended exhibitions in ENFO on energy saving. Children in each classroom were appointed as energy monitors. Their job is to ensure that we save as much energy as possible by remembering to switch off lights when we leave the classroom, turn off any electrical equipment and close the windows. We also fundraised for new school windows that were more energy efficient. We reduced our energy usage by 30%.

Water
The next flag we were awarded was for water. Again, as in previous years, the green school committee set out targets at the beginning of the year. We installed mecon buttons on every toilet in the school. This helped to reduce the amount of water being used every time we flushed the toilet. We encouraged parents to also try and reduce the amount of water in each toilet flush by putting a filled litre bottle into the cisterns of their toilets.

As in previous years we ran various events to increase the pupils’, staffs’ and parents’ awareness of our green theme. Events included poetry and art competitions, action days, visits from outside agencies and drama groups. We learned about water saving in class and we sent out a questionnaire to parents which highlighted their use of water in the home, encouraging them to reuse water for gardening and to take short showers instead of baths.

Travel
The fourth theme we worked on was travel. All children were encouraged to walk, cycle or take the bus to school. We put in place various initiatives encourage the children. All children were given a high visibility jacket to wear to school so that they could be seen by cars on the road. We installed bike shelters on our school grounds. We ran workshops on safe cycling skills on the road. Our green school committee co-ordinated with parents to set up a walking bus. This involved groups of children meeting in the morning time to walk to school under the supervision of two or three parents.

We created an award called a WOW boot. WOW stands for walk on Wednesday. The green school committee would record in each class the number of children who had walked, cycled or taken the bus to school. The winning class were awarded the WOW boot at school assembly, which they kept in their class for the following week. We ran a walk to school week where all children made an extra effort to walk to school. During this week we ran various competitions and the winner were given bikes that had been sponsored by local businesses.

Biodiversity
The final flag that we received was for Biodiversity. For this themewe conducted an environmental review of our school grounds and revisited past green school themes. We looked at the various plants and trees growing on our grounds and looked at ways in which we could increase their diversity. To do this we planted a wild flower garden to attract different insects and also maintained our frog pond. We had our own vegetable patch and sensory bed on the schools grounds. Children also planted herbs and tomatoes to take home and replant. In class we kept track of the seasons and changes on our grounds during these times.

Climate Change
We are currently working on the theme of Climate Change. We have continued with all the initiatives that we had put in place when working on our previous theme, such as walk to school week, cycling skills workshops, attending exhibitions, inviting guest speakers, running competitions being energy and water efficient and recycling waste. By maintaining all these actions we are helping to combat Climate Change. We are revising all the previous themes in class and our older classes are working on projects specifically about Climate Change. We will be having an action day in our school in November to further highlight this theme. We are blogging on our school News and Events blog to keep parents and the public up to date about all the work we do around Green Schools. We have introduced a Green Tip of the Week which we announce at assembly. These tips help to remind children about the themes that we already received green flags for. Our school newsletter also keeps our families in touch with our Green schools themes.

Our Green School Achievements
We have worked very hard on all themes and have enjoyed a number of successes. We reduced our energy output by 30% and our waste by 50% and have succeeded in raising environmental awareness both at school and at home. Our achievements have been recognised by various organisations. In 2005 we won the School Communities First Award for being a Green School. One of our past Green School committee members won the Young Citizen award in 2006 for her work on the Green Schools Committee. Also in 2006 the Minister for Education awarded our school for its efforts during European Mobility Week. We were thrilled to be awarded The Irish Times Living Dublin Award in 2008. This recognised the school’s contribution to raising environmental awareness in our local community. In 2010 we won the City Neighbourhood Award for our beautifully landscaped and bio diverse school grounds.



For details of all Green School Events held in the school please visit our News and Events Blog.

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