St Bede's awarded Silver Eco-School Status

St Bede’s Senior School has been awarded Silver Eco-School status. We will continue to work towards Green Flag status over the next two terms. To achieve the award we have an eco-action committee made up of students that has met weekly during term time to raise awareness of environmental issues around the school. Mr Hepworth Taylor and Mr Hodges have implemented many of the student’s ideas around the school. Mr Barr is our parent representative.

Things we have already set into action:
1) Blue paper recycling bins have been positioned around the school.
2) A bottle and can recycling area has been set up on the school grounds.
3) Switch off fortnight campaign has been run to raise awareness of how much energy is wasted around St Bede’s and encourage people to save energy.
4) We have built and put up 25 nest boxes for the endangered Hazel Dormouse in local woodland.
5) The school is installing environmentally friendly technologies in new buildings such as ground source heat pumps in the new boarding houses.
6) We have written and adopted an ‘eco code’ to encourage the whole school to be environmentally friendly.
7) Taken part in the BBC’s “Tree o Clock” tree planting campaign planting over 60 trees around the school.

The following objectives have been set:
Short Term Objectives:
1) Engage more members of the school community into thinking about environmental issues to enable us to recruit representatives from across the school to sit on our action group.
2) Complete another electricity consumption audit to enable us to demonstrate that we have continued to cut energy consumption following our campaign.
3) Continue to provide an eco school activity to enable interested parties to contribute ideas to the action group.
4) Strengthen links with Ringmer Community College; our local green flag designated state school, enabling both establishments to benefit from our shared experience.
5) Press on with habitat improvement and surveying of the Hazel Dormouse in local woodland. This will act as our ‘flagship’ species to help local biodiversity.
6) Recycle paper around the school by providing blue recycling bins and volunteers to empty them during Wednesday activities.
7) Encourage people not to waste paper.

Medium Term Objectives:
1) Continue to increase recycling facilities around the school.
2) Establish a dedicated nature reserve within the school grounds.
3) Encourage recycling and energy saving activities via house competitions.

Long Term Objectives:
1) Introduce renewable energy sources to the school (solar power, ground source heat pumps and wind turbines).
2) Install a bio-diesel plant on the school grounds to convert chip oil into fuel for our fleet of minibuses.

If any parent or member of staff is interested in contributing to the eco schools project please contact Paul Juniper via paul.juniper@stbedesschool.org