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Our school is a green school and our
motto is “Let’s be seen to be Clean and Green”. We have five Green Flags and
hopefully are well on the way to achieving our sixth.
As part of the
organisation of our Green School, we have a Green School Committee made up of
the Principal and pupils from 1st to 6th Classes. With
the help of this committee, the teachers and pupils of our school strive to
keep our environment clean and green.
By “Green” I mean several things.
Firstly, a clean, healthy environment for all of us to work and play in.
Recently the school was involved in a Tidy Towns competition and received First
Place. This would not have been achieved without the regular litter collection
that takes place in the school. Work parties involving parents and pupils were
organised to help clear areas of the school grounds. Plants and bulbs were
planted to ensure that the grounds looked well.
To be “Green”, our school feels the
need to reduce, reuse and recycle. An area of the school has been set aside for
this purpose although larger recycling projects do take place outside.
Various projects have been given to
individual classes to explore, for example the wormery, can collection, ringos,
stamps, cartridge and mobile phone collection etc.
The items we recycle are as above
but also, milk cartons, paper, batteries, electrical goods and clothes.
Fourth class are in charge of our
“Ringleader programme”. This involves the plastic ring can/bottle corner for
food and beverage multi products. We take part in this project in order to
educate our children about plastic and packaging as part of the Social,
Environmental and Scientific Studies Curriculum. All rings are sent back to be
reused to make new rings.
In order to reduce our waste we set
up paper bins in each of the classrooms. This paper is put into the green bin,
thus reducing our waste.
Along with these paper bins, each classroom and the staffroom have a compost
bin into which goes pencil sharpenings and vegetative matter. This is collected
daily and placed in our composter at the back of the school.
Beside our composter you will find
our wormery. Second class were involved in the setting up of this project. This
was a project we took on so that we would be able to recycle cooked food. We
regularly feed our worms and they are multiplying at a fierce rate!
Fifth class are in charge of our can
collection. Twice a week they collect drink cans from the classes. These are
crushed and put in large bags which are collected.
Stamps are collected throughout the
school. They are sent off to IPCC “Save the Bogs Campaign” and go towards
sustaining our bogs in Ireland.
Old batteries are collected in
special containers and recycled at a recycling centre in Kildare.
Third class started up our printer
cartridges and mobile phone recycling. Money is forwarded to the school for all
collected and this is sent off to assist in the work of Temple Street
Children's Hospital.
In order to recycle old clothes
belonging to the families in the school, we regularly support Clothes line who
recycle old clothes. Certain days are designated whereby bags can be left by
the parents and they are collected .
A project we introduced last year
was Electrical Recycling. This was very simple. A large bin was left for a
period of time at the school. The appliances were dismantled and recycled at
specialised treatment plants. The recycled material is used to make new
products.
As you can see, we are heavily
involved in various recycling projects in the school. There are many reasons
why we do this and one of them is that landfilling is not sustainable. We
cannot continue to bury the problem. Materials which are in limited supply must
be reused and recycled in order to ensure that they are not exhausted.
With the increased cost of waste
disposal, it is important that we reduce the amount of materials which we are
disposing. So our school continues to work towards our motto:
“Our School is Green so let's keep it clean!!”
