Environmental Review

Environmental Review Summary 2017-18

Litter

As previously stated, litter is not a problem inside the school as pupils are aware of the impact on the environment, our healthy snack policy means children only eat fruit on the yard which minimises the amount of litter and wrappers which are brought to school. The problem with litter is outside. Litter tends to blow into our grounds. The Eco warriors work on a rota to complete daily litter picks during break times and lunchtimes.

Waste Minimisation

We are good at recycling plastic and paper. The infant department are effectively recycling all plastic milk bottles, the eco warriors have taken ownership of the task and work on a daily rota. We record the amount of recycling we do on a weekly basis. We need to focus now on recycling our ink cartridges, we have been collecting the empty cartridges and have emailed the council and businesses around the community, however, we have had no success yet. We will investigate this further.

Global Citizenship

This is something we have now built into our thematic units, including studying Fair Trade in Year 5/6 Food and Farming topic, year 3/4 complete a yearly topic called ‘what a load of rubbish’ where they learn all about climate change, recycling and sustainability. We have been delivering global goals lessons throughout the school on a half term basis and children are aware of Global issues.

Energy

We intend to focus on this during this academic year, as we know there is room for improvement. Lights are sometimes left on in class when the room is empty. The class Eco Warriors will be monitoring this closely and keeping a record. We will be looking at the impact of always turning lights off by reading the meter every month and ECO warriors will be responsible for completing their class energy checklist every day to ensure lights are switched off when not in use. The ECO warriors are also going to check that computers are switched off when not in use. We will be comparing electricity bills to see the impact of this.

Water

We learn about water as part of curriculum work. Some of us have noticed that taps are sometimes dripping after someone has used them, wasting water. We are aware of the impact of this, and so we have posters in every class reminding pupils and staff to check the taps. The infant department has a water butt on the top corridor patio that is used to water plants outside. We are hoping to collect water in ks2 as well to water the plants during gardening club.

Transport

We are continuing with our Bike It Programme by linking Healthy Living with Transport. Transport has always had excellent coverage in our school and the topic of ‘Traffic and Transport’ is built into our curriculum. We will be completing a survey on how people travel to school using the keep wales tidy resource on their website.

Healthy Living

Our Healthy Schools programme is ongoing. Drinking water is always available, we sell fruit every playtime and all classes participate in fitness programmes. We also build this into our curriculum and children are taught the importance of having a healthy lifestyle. We have termly visits from outside agencies and the school nurses who run workshops for the children about health and hygiene. We will be asking our lunchtime supervisors to monitor packed lunches to ensure children are having a balanced healthy meal. We have our healthy school award and run a successful summer school for three out of 6 weeks in the summer holidays. Here the children learn all about nutrition and exercise and completing the programme, graduate in nutrition skills with’ food and fun Wales.

School Grounds

School grounds are a work in progress, we have made lots of improvements this year. Jeremy Davies our parent Governor has carried out work near our bottle Greenhouse to develop some raised planters for the children to use. He is also keen to involve our children with the wider community by taking them to Cyfarthfa Park etc. We have had new playground games for children and we are working with interserve who have carried out community work and have used recycled materials to create planters. We will be gathering photographic evidence showing before and after photos.