29 January 2025
Why?
CFitzgerald@aquinas-cmat.org
The quote chosen for the year by our Eco team is taken from Pope Francis encyclical “Laudato Si – Care of our common home”
“What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?”
Our 3 Eco Missions are focusing on:
NATURE – TRAVEL – FOOD
Is there something else, not covered in the Sub-Missions, which your group want to work on that would fit the Water mission?
Cutting down on wasting water is a good way to look after this precious resource. Young people will need to work with school leaders or site staff on this one, but can help by identifying areas where water saving devices, like push taps and short flushes, are not in place. They can also inform their fellow students about the importance of saving water at home and at school and give them tips on how to do it.
There is a huge amount of plastic in our oceans; by 2050 it is predicted that there will be more plastic than fish. This sub-mission is about raising awareness of this issue, carrying out activism to remind people of the issue and of what they can do to stop it happening. Reminders to recycle and use bins are a good way to do this, as is posters and artwork around drains to remind people that rubbish that goes into our drains could end up in our seas. If your school do a day trip to the seaside, or your school is near a river, a litter pick would be a good way to stop more rubbish finding its way into the sea.
What changes can you make to your school grounds to make better use of water? Could water butts be installed, with this water then used to water your vegetables and plants? Could you install a pond to give wildlife a habitat and provide a source of education for your classmates?
Our water is a precious gift, so we need to make sure it is taken care of. Your young people might want to challenge our politicians and water company CEO’s about waste being dumped in our rivers and seas, something which is harmful to us as well as wildlife. Perhaps they will raise awareness on the amount of plastic in our oceans and what we can do about it. Or maybe they want to inform others about the importance of saving water and how to do it. The choice is theirs.
Is there something else, not covered in the Sub-Missions, which your group want to work on that would fit the Waste mission?
Young people have a horrible habit of growing, meaning that uniform is often too small a year after it has been bought. Producing new clothing takes a lot of energy and resources. Not only that, but buying new uniform each year is expensive. A good solution to this is to set up a permanent Uniform Exchange in school, somewhere easily accessible to parents. This means that parents can bring in clean uniform, which is still in good condition but is too small and can swap it for a bigger size. This is a good way to help our environment and cut down on costs.
You’ll need to promote this to parents in your school and parish newsletter and possibly by producing some posters too. Some photos of it being used would be a good form of evidence to show what you did too.
It’s hard to recycle things if you don’t have the right bins and facilities in school. Without them, this means that tons of waste will be going to landfill or being burnt, which could be reused or recycled. In this sub-mission, you’ll need to do an audit of what kind of bins and recycling facilities you have and what you need adding. Maybe your could add in bins for hard to recycle plastics eg. crisp packets, toothbrushes and batteries. (https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/ https://www.recyclenow.com/recycling-locator)
You’ll need to work with school leaders to get the bins and recycling collections you need and you’ll need to work with and inform the rest of the school about the types of bins that are now in school and what to put in them – labels on bins would definitely help! Remember to keep a track of the impact of your work by measuring the fall in the amount of waste going into landfill bins.
Once you’ve reduced, or got rid of, one item of plastic in school, reduced litter and increased your recycling facilities, your task is the ambitious target of working towards being a zero waste school! Could food waste be turned into compost for your veg garden? Is all uniform either exchanged or put in a clothes bank? Have you got rid of single use plastic in school? Lots to work on in this one!
Plastic is a big part of our waste problem, especially when it is not recycled or reused. Could your students identify one area of plastic usage in your school which could be cut down on? This could be single use plastic bottles, some unnecessary plastic packaging in the canteen or plastic lined cups used for warm drinks which can’t be recycled. Remember to keep a track of the impact your group have in reducing this item.
Litter on the floor looks untidy and makes the places we live not nice places to be. More importantly, this litter could be eaten by wildlife or wash into the sea through drains. Organising litter picks in school or in the local area is a good way to address this. Perhaps you could also get another local school involved or invite local parishioners or parents to get involved. Remember to keep a record of how much litter is collected and recycle as much as possible!
This sub-mission is a chance for your group to speak out, and perhaps mobilise the rest of your community to speak out, about issues around waste. This might include creating posters to encourage people not to litter, or to recycle. Maybe your young people think that there are not enough recycling bins in their local town and want to challenge the council on this. This is a good sub-mission for making a noise and getting the change we want to see!
Is there something else, not covered in the Sub-Missions, which your group want to work on that would fit the Travel mission?
Is there the facilities and support in school for students and staff to travel in sustainable ways? Do you have enough bike and scooter parking places? Are they covered to keep them dry? Is there any other support which could be put in place to support people to travel more sustainably? This sub-mission is one where students identify some of these things and work with school leaders to make changes.
This sub-mission builds further on the travel week sub-missions. After successfully running termly travel weeks, the task faced by your students now is to make that behaviour more regular. This might include running ongoing monitoring and competitions and continuing with regular travel weeks in order to make travel to your school as green as possible.
Could your students organised a green travel week once a year, where students, parents and staff are encouraged to travel to school in more sustainable ways eg. By foot, bike, bus or car share. Don’t forget to do some monitoring to find out how people normally travel, how they travelled that week and what difference it made. Perhaps you could run a competition for the week to find the most eco-friendly class or form group?
You may have completed the Yearly Travel Week, or want to be more ambitious from the start. This sub-mission will involve running a travel week once per term, encouraging everyone in the school community to travel using a sustainable form of transport.
Transport is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, so speaking out about the biggest causes and things which need to change is really important. Could your young people look into what the issues are with transport in your local area and challenge your MP on it? Perhaps they might want to challenge the leaders of the country on what they are doing to make travel across the country more eco-friendly and call on them to do more. Or, perhaps they want to run a campaign to encourage the members of your local community to change their travel behaviours.
Our schools are focal points for a large amount of travelling in the morning and afternoon, getting hundreds of people in and out of the building each day. Sometimes mums, dads and other people dropping off in the morning or waiting to collect in the afternoon keep the engine running while they are sat in the car. This is called ‘idling’ and it is a big contributor to air pollution around our schools. This can affect the health of students and staff and contributes to our carbon footprint. What can your group do to get this message across to parents and cut down on it happening?
Is there something else, not covered in the Sub-Missions, which your group want to work on that would fit the Energy mission?
As we build more houses, roads and buildings, the places our wildlife used to live are being more and more scarce. Could your students create some wildlife habitats within your school grounds to support those who share our common home? This could be through building and installing birdboxes, creating bug hotels or through an idea your group comes up with themselves.
Wildflower areas are both beautiful and provide important habitats and eco-systems for Bees, other insects and other wildlife. Could your students find an area of your school grounds to re-wild, using wildflower seeds to do so. Maybe this could be part of a prayer garden or done in conjunction with a school allotment.
Trees are an important part of our path to a net-zero world. They are also a vital cog in improving air quality, providing shade from the sun, and preventing flooding and provide habitats for wildlife to flourish in. Planting more trees is a really positive thing to do and is the target of this sub-mission.
There are a number of charities and organisations who will give you free trees to plant. Here are just a couple:
https://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html
While it might not be possible for your students to plant trees or flowers or create habitatsyour in your school grounds. However, this sub-mission encourages young people to do some of these things in their local communities, perhaps working with Local Authorities, parishes, sports centres or businesses who have green spaces. Completing this sub-mission will help to improve eco-systems in your local area and make it a nicer place to live.
Is there an issue affecting our natural world which your students want to speak out about? Perhaps they want to inform others about the impact our actions are having on the habitats of wildlife, the decrease in the Bee population and the impact this could have or maybe they want to challenge our leaders on what they are doing to stop de-forestation around the world, particularly in the Amazon rainforest. This is a really important sub-mission to take part in.
This sub-mission may involve setting up a forest school or gardening club in school. This sub-mission could be a development of having completed the Tree Planting, Wildflower Seeding and Wildlife habitats sub-missions. In that case, this sub-mission would involve your students maintaining, looking after and adding to the things which have been planted and created. This could also link to the Kitchen Garden sub mission in the Food theme or it could just be an opportunity for young people to explore and learn more about nature in their forest school.
Is there something else, not covered in the Sub-Missions, which your group want to work on that would fit the Food mission?
This could be a development of your Kitchen Garden sub-mission. Once students have grown their fruit and veg, could it be sold to parents, staff or students? This money could be used for other Eco Missions or as part of your Cafod fundraising. Another way to complete the Sustainable Shop sub-mission might be to hold a regular fairtrade shop in school, with assemblies held to teach the rest of the school about the fair trade movement. Money raised could go towards your £1 per person fundraising target for Cafod.
Could your students work with the school caterers in order to get more plant based options onto the menu? Perhaps there could be days planned into the calendar where every meal is plant based? Could they work with the caterers and a group of students to do taste tests on certain foods to make sure a change of menu is well received? This is an exciting sub-mission to work on!
In working towards this sub-mission, students will get their hands dirty and will experience growing food from scratch. Students will grow their own fruit and veg in a school garden or allotment, with the hope that this food can be used in the school canteen and eaten by their classmates. This will enable some very low carbon food to be produced and give students experience and knowledge of growing their own food.
This sub-mission is one which will encourage students to use their voices to speak out and make a change. That might be around changes to behaviour which students want to encourage (eg. More plant based food being eaten) or raising issues around the need the foodbank in your local community, encouraging local businesses to support as much as possible.
It takes lots of energy and resources to grow, produce, package, transport and cook food, so food waste is something we need to try to avoid. In working towards this sub-mission, students will work with caterers to adapt menus and with the rest of school to find out why food is being wasted and what changes they might like to see to the menu. An awareness campaign on the importance of not wasting food, as well as monitoring of the amount of wood wasted over the year are important parts of completing this sub-mission.
Could you link up with your local Food Bank to become an official collection point for them? Perhaps you could run collection drives through your school, parish and local community. Not only would this help member of your community, but it could also help to cut down on food waste.
Is there something else, not covered in the Sub-Missions, which your group want to work on that would fit the Energy mission?
Progress your Switch-off campaign and have greater impact by switching off once a term.
Progress your Switch-off campaign even further by having a switch off day once a month.
Could your Eco Team organise a campaign where, on a one off day, on a few days during the year, all electrical items are turned off? This would include computers, printers, photocopiers, projectors and laminators – a big challenge for sure. It would be fantastic if your team can measure the impact of this by showing the difference in how much energy is used in that day. Once you’ve done this once, perhaps you could progress onto a more regular switch off once a month or term.
The type of energy we use, and how much we use of it, is one of the big contributors to our world-wide carbon footprint. To complete this Global Action sub-mission, you will do something to speak out on this situation and try to affect change.
This could be about questioning your local MP or a cabinet minister on our renewable energy policy and challenging the people in charge to do more and to speed up. Or perhaps you might challenge them on why more companies are being allowed to drill for oil, when we need to stop using it.
Perhaps you might want to join in with something organised by Cafod or another organisation which draws attention to the issue of energy use, or maybe you could organise for your whole school to join together as one voice, maybe by writing letters to politicians or energy company CEOs to let them know what they need to change or to apply for funding for renewable energy for your school.
Students acting as energy monitors can have a great impact in school, making sure lights are turned off in rooms and projectors not left on when they are not needed. A weekly competition to show who is the most green and switching off might be a good way to encourage a change in behaviour.
Staying warm in the winter is important, and necessary at school to make sure everyone is healthy and can learn. However, the heating in our schools costs a lot of money and, more importantly, uses a huge amount of energy. Students tackling this sub-mission will work with other members of the school community to monitor the amount of energy used and to see how it can be limited. This might be done through making sure the heating is only on when needed, coming up with ways to keep classrooms warm, such as draught excluders and keeping windows clear so that sunlight can heat the room.