At the Eco Committee at Currie Community High School, we were recently given a massive grant of £3,500 by Parents in Partnership to spend however we thought best to help make our school more eco-friendly. Rather than coming up with ideas by ourselves, we ran a scheme within the school where we asked pupils and teachers to make suggestions as to how they thought the money would best be spent. At a recent eco meeting, we discussed all the responses we received and decided which suggestions were most appropriate, taking into consideration our overall budget and what could realistically be achieved. We had some excellent responses, and have decided to use many of them. Some such ideas included:
- Large stickers encouraging people to dispose of their litter properly, designed by pupils to be stuck onto school litter bins, as suggested by Gemma King (S6) with the S2 JASS Litter Group.
- Native wildflowers planted in Roley’s Wood to create a wetland area to encourage local wildlife, an idea brought forward by EDGE Explorer Scouts.
- Two or three A0-size posters depicting eco-themed artwork to be professionally printed onto boards and presented as a permanent display in the school foyer, a suggestion made by Mrs Steel and her Art and Design pupils.
- A simple automatic watering system to be installed in the school greenhouse so that plants don’t die over the holidays. This would mean we could grow more fruit, vegetables and other plants in the greenhouse, an idea of Rachel Avery, Environment Project Worker.
There were many other interesting suggestions made, too numerous to mention in this article. After deciding which ideas we’re going to go for, we still have around £400 available to spend on eco-related projects. If anyone within the school has any further suggestions on how they would like to see the remaining budget spent, they shouldn’t hesitate to approach anyone from the Eco Committee to share their ideas – they will be considered in a future meeting. We are particularly keen to hear about projects related to our 3 main Eco-School topics for action: Litter, Food & the Environment and Global Citizenship.
If anyone is interested in finding out more about what the Eco Committee has been up to in the school, there are full details available on our regularly updated blog, at
www.currieco.blogspot.com.
Hanne-Lisbeth Paterson, Eco Committee member, S5.
