Our Green Schools News

We are delighted to announce that we have received our 6th Green Flag – Titled – ‘Global Citizenship – Litter & Waste’

We have listed of some of  the many activities which the Green Schools Committee undertook in order to achieve our flag below along with some photos also.

Well done and thanks to our Green Schools Committee members who have put in a lot of hard work for the last two years.

Some pictures from our Green School Activities – part of our Action Day

Planting our Spring Bulbs & Trees in October 2019

Feeding and Bird Watching

Junior & Senior Infants Project

Our School Garden 2020

Our Bug Hotel

We await our chance to get back to school to fill our hotel with twigs, moss, bamboo shoots, bricks  etc to provide nice cosy habitats for our mini-beasts.


Planting

 

School Garden June 2020

 

As Global Citizens, we must try to Reduce our Use of Single-Use Plastic . Some tips for us to try…

  • Bees Wax Wraps – to keep food fresh in place of cling- film and tinfoil.
  • Use paper lunch bags or a lunch box instead of plastic bags.
  • Use a bar of soap instead of plastic soap dispensers.
  • Use paper/metal or bamboo straws instead of plastic straws.
  • Use bamboo cotton buds in place of plastic cotton buds.
  • Use reusable drinking bottles in place of plastic drinking bottles.
  • Use bamboo toothbrushes as they are environmentally friendly.
  • Have you got any other ideas to share with us? – We would love to hear them.

 This is a list of some of the activities we have undertaken for Our Green Schools Project over the past two years.

  • Presentation at assembly & to individual classes to revise / Refresh – Litter & Waste Theme –
  • Recap of where the various items of waste need to go in our classroom bins – Compost, Recycling and Landfill.
  • Collection of some clean & dry yogurt cartons and other recyclable products from the bins for use in the Infant Classroom for their Junk Art Play.
  • Regular daily monitoring of classroom bins – Bin/Waste Challenge – this was a classroom & staffroom, based challenge where each class was given bonus points if they were following our advice and recycling classroom waste appropriately. Each class was awarded a certain amount of points daily and a class trophy -Our Green Schools Bin Challenge trophy was awarded to the best class every two weeks.
  • We purchased a new rotatable Composter – in order to reduce our waste costs –
  • Use of the compost for our new school garden which is under construction at the minute
  • Planting of trees and some spring bulbs in our school garden.
  • Feeding the birds
  • We invited Devin O Suillivan to give a presentation to each class titled ‘Ár dtalamh’. This was very interesting and he taught us a lot about Climate Change and how we can play our part as we get older and how to live more sustainably.
  • Green Schools project on Single Use Plastic – presentation to all pupils and demonstration as to how we can reduce our single use plastic use – bamboo toothbrushes, wax wraps instead of cling-film /tinfoil etc to wrap our sandwiches in. use of reusable bottles – not using plastic bottles or cartons each day, reuse of our lunchboxes – not using plastic lunch bags,  using bars of soap instead of plastic pump bottles. Stitching / mending our clothes rather than always buying new items,
  • Asking all families to write down how they reduce waste and how we can help create a more sustainable environment for future generations.
  • We created and designed a leaflet for each family giving information about each flag.

 

List of Our Green School Flags awarded to date:

Flag No. 1 – Litter & Waste

Flag No.2 – Energy Conservation

Flag No. 3 – Water Conservation

Flag No. 4 – Sustainable Travel

Flag No. 5 – Biodiversity

Flag No. 6 – Global Citizenship – Litter & Waste