The eco committee have been working their socks off this year making sure that we continued to strive to make Turves Greener! Paper recycling has continued ticking away nicely, with pupils taking charge to make sure that they get emptied on a regular basis and this year they have reported less and less non-paper waste in those particular bins! I call that a win.
In regards to our global citizenship initiative, we have finally produced a working plastic bottle greenhouse! We have also saved old light covers from the bin! So with the plastic bottles they have been used for 3 different purposes. Firstly, you chop the bottom off and then can use it to shield saplings as they are growing to protect them from the wind and other elements. Secondly, we used them to build the plastic bottle greenhouse which has a hinge lid made out of old twine. You cut the bottoms off the bottles and then stack them together tightly so that they do not fall over and use old cane to get them into place while you string them together. Thirdly, we made some bird feeders by making holes and pushing a lolly pop stick through a slot underneath for the birds to perch on and again used some left over string to make the top of the holder. These are available in reception Thursday and Friday this week on a first come, first served basis. Our trip to the Waste Age exhibition at the MAC definitely inspired some innovation here! Oh and you’ll never guess how useful the old light fixtures are! So the school decided to place our old energy inefficient lighting with much more energy saving fixtures but the big old plastic covers were destined for the bin but we saved them! For now they are using used to weigh down some membrane to kill off the last of the horsehair before the autumn planting and will then be used alongside our plastic bottles as a form of insulation (like a polytunnel) for our saplings!
Thinking about the school grounds, we have been able to include some planters out the front of the school to encourage pollinators as well as a memory bench. The planters either side have some wildflowers and wisteria which will grow as our pupils do. It’s a calm space for pupils to sit, reflect and calm their minds whilst taking in a good dose of mother nature. We’ve also cleared up the forest school building and made a pathway between our allotment patches so pupils can safely navigate their way around. We also planted more fruit trees so next year we might be able to sample plum, cherries and pears alongside our home grown apples.
Our final target for this year was to improve biodiversity. Besides planting more trees, bushes and pollinator friendly plants, we have now installed over 20 bird boxes, 5 bug hotels, rid our garden of the horse hair which had taken over the whole of the space behind the sports hall and installed our own pond!! This has been a long work in progress and one that the pupils say is their proudest achievement. Already they are seeing wildlife in there which have come naturally. We are looking forward to the first stickleback we see in there (turns out bird poop can be very useful!).
We’re busy finishing off the final details on our green flag application which will mean we have been green 2 years running, committing ourselves to continually improving to make Turves Greener!
