The Eco Council at Borras Park Community Primary School, Wrexham, are hoping that through leading by example with their environmental work, they will encourage others to step up and make small changes in their own lives too.
The school’s Eco Council consists of members from Early Years all the way up to Year 6, and they meet regularly throughout the term to develop and enhance their action plan.
“Inspire their peers to be more environmentally friendly”
Alessia, aged 7, said: “I like being on the Eco Council because it’s important to learn about environmental matters. Year 3 are also learning about climate change for our topic this term. We need to learn what we can do to stop our planet getting any warmer.”
Robert Stock, who co-ordinates the Eco Council, said: “We’re extremely proud of our pupils work on environmental matters. We have an extremely active Eco Council that act as leaders and inspire their peers to be more environmentally friendly.”
This hasn’t happened overnight either; the school has been taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint for many years, leading to them being awarded the prestigious ‘Platinum Flag’ by Eco Schools Wales during the summer term of 2018.
The award is the highest possible one available to schools and is only given for ten-plus years of continued environmental work.
Mr Stock added: “Our sustained work over the last decade has led to us being awarded the prestigious Eco Schools ‘Platinum Flag’. We’re also a member of the ‘One World’ program, which is a global network of educators and pupils working together to make our pupils more globally competent.
“As a Platinum Flag school, we now annually attend the Wales National Eco Council meeting alongside the other Platinum Flag schools.”
Action Plan
This year, the schools action plan is to:
• Reduce, Reuse and Recycle as much as possible
• Lessen the amount of non-renewable energy the school uses
• To develop new international links
• To continue to be a carbon neutral school and inspire other schools to follow
• To use Ecosia.org as the default search engine in school (Ecosia use their profits to plant trees in areas of the world most affected by deforestation)
Being carbon neutral
In 2019, the school became carbon neutral for the first time, which is a great achievement.
Mr Stock told us: “We achieved this by calculating our carbon emissions and then offset these by helping to fund green projects on the UN’s Carbon Offset platform (offset.climateneutralnow.org).”
International links
Borras Park CP is a member of the ‘One World’ international group of schools that aims to make children more globally competent.
Mr Stock explained: “Our school has a ‘One World’ after school club, led by our headteacher, Mr Nicholson. Children who attend are referred to as ‘Agents of Change’ and they connect and collaborate with other One World clubs around the World and discuss global issues.
“Myself and Mr Nicholson attended ‘One World Week’ in New York in November 2019. We worked alongside teachers from around the world at a series of workshops on the teaching of ‘global competence’ and planned a shared topic for our school to work on during the spring term.”
Climate Action
Mr Stock teaches a Year 3 class at Borras Park CP, and they’re currently studying the topic ‘Climate Action’, which they are working on alongside other ‘One World’ schools.
Mr Stock said: “Some of the work we have completed is learning about global warming and climate change. We have also looked at ways to discuss our own personal carbon footprints and made an ‘Eco Pledge’ for 2020.”
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