Events Autumn 2005 - Summer 2006

EcoSchools UK Most recent events appear at the top of this list. However, gaining our first Green Flag is so important that throughout the year this must remain at the top

Green Flag Our application for the Eco-Schools Green Flag award was a significant event for the Eco Group. We had been working since 2003 towards this goal, and gained our bronze and silver awards in 2004.  Ben and Becky spent many hours going through the application and the current Action Plan; several students did brilliant presentations of the work of Eco-Schools in assemblies, and we submitted our application in November 2005.  Our assessment  took place in January 2006. All those who had played a particularly active part in the Eco Group were invited to meet the inspectors. Teachers were sent away and the inspectors talked to the thirty students for an hour about the activities of the group. All aspects were covered, from Fair Trade to the school grounds, and from Eco Day to litter. Finally, the group split into two with each smaller group escorting one of the assessors round the school site. The students involved thought that the assessors liked what they saw, and in feedback to Miss Edwards and Mrs Hickman afterwards, it was evident that they had been impressed. However, we had to wait two weeks to hear that we had been awarded the Green Flag. Well done to the thirty students who represented the school at this assessment. You did a fine job and should be proud of your part in our achievement. The school has seen some remarkable improvements, particularly in the target areas of recycling and the school grounds. Very many students and adults have contributed to this success, so well done and thanks to all members of the school community  who have taken on board the  Eco-Schools philosophy.
Sustainability Schools will shortly be accountable for the damage they inflict on the environment! In October, all school will have to undertake a self-evaluation of their steps towards sustainability. As a school that is taking large and positive steps to increase its sustainability, we were invited to pilot the Department for Education and Science's self-evaluation form this summer. Thank you to the parents, governors and students who helped. Your contributions have gone to the DfES and we await further news.
Milk bottle tops Milk bottle top collection continues! Congratulations to Mr Elliott's tutor group and Miss Cooke's tutor group. They were joint winners of the milk bottle top collections. Pictures will appear shortly. Congratulations too to Miss Middlewick's Year 11 tutor group who won the 'other recyclables' category with a particularly good collection of CDs. Unfortunately the students had left school by the time the results were announced. Since Naomi House announced that they cannot collect themselves any more, we now send our tops straight to the recycling firm and have made arrangements for them to be collected directly form school. Thank you to the hundreds of people who are collecting tops for us: the money will continue to go to charity. Important message to those people who are not connected to the school We are delighted to have your tops, and you are more than welcome to leave CLEAN milk bottle tops in reception at the school.  PLEASE put nothing but green, blue red or white MILK bottle tops in the collection, even if you think the plastic looks the same or it's exactly the same colour but doesn't come from a milk bottle! The inclusion of ONE such top ruins an entire consignment: instead of high density polyethylene, it is regarded as mixed plastic and is virtually worthless. Sifting through thousands of tops takes hours of time and is precisely the reason that Naomi House gave up collecting!
Work in the grounds.  The 2006 season began in earnest with pond clearance. Thanks to Jack and Nick for this. We found that we had a big problem with Crassula, a very invasive species. Read all about it here. While doing this clearance, we were delighted to find about a dozen very young lizards and some tiny newts. Read about it here (and see if you can spot the newts!)
Orang Utans and Oil palms Students enjoyed seeing two teachers who dressed as an orang utan and a businessman to publicise a talk given at lunchtime about the way in which oil palm plantations are destroying the habitat of orang utans in Indonesia. Photos will follow! We learnt that ... This area of the world is orang-utans' only habitat  Today the greatest threat to orang-utan habitat is the continued expansion of oil-palm plantations Palm oil is a vegetable oil found in 1 in 10 supermarket products, such as chocolate, bread, crisps, detergents and lipsticks. Unless we do something,  the palm oil trade will probably cause the extinction of the orang-utan within 12 years. The palm oil industry, along with greed for rainforest timber are the main causes of the orang-utans' decline. Clips from a BBC video were shown at the well attended talk. One week after this talk the Indonesian government announced it was abandoning plans to destroy 1.8 million hectares of rainforest by establishing oil palm plantations in prime orangutan habitat. This has come about through pressure from different groups and UK MPs. Writing helps! Further action is needed and if you want to do something, e-mail Margaret Hodge. Click here.  LATEST UPDATE here Your e-mails helped! On 21st June, Tesco announced that they intend to join the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil , something they had long refused to do, even after the palm oil day of action last October. Their decision followed the huge press attention and email action in June.  Orang-utans campaigning to get Tesco to join the roundtable! Well done to everyone who supported this campaign and those who asked Tesco to join the RSPO. Well done Tesco too!
RSPB Big School Birdwatch 2006  A team of 25 students joined in with the RSPB Big Schools' Birdwatch on February 2nd. They recorded the HIGHEST NUMBER of birds of each species they saw at any one time over a period of an hour.  The results show a spectacular improvement in both numbers and diversity compared with last year.  Thanks to all who took part.   Pied wagtail 24   Blue tit 7 House sparrow 17   Blackbird 6 Rook 12   Common gull 5 Chaffinch 12   Great tit 4 Woodpigeon 11   Robin 3 Dunnock 11   Coal tit 2 Starling 10   Magpie 2 Herring gull  9   Jackdaw 2 Carrion crow  8   Collared dove 2 Black-headed gull  7   Greenfinch 1 We knew we had lots of wagtails, and they are quite common in Hampshire schools. However, this is great news for house sparrows! House sparrows are in serious decline across most of the UK . Around 65% of sparrows have been lost since mid-1970s. The decline has been particularly bad in centres of large cities including London , Edinburgh and Glasgow . The RSPB is one of many groups that are researching sparrow decline. There are no answers yet, but it seems that it is probably due to lack of food availability at some parts of the year and availability of nesting sites.
Mobile and battery recycling:  Mobiles handed in for recycling in January were sent to the Woodland Trust to support their work in schools. The Trust has supplied us with all the native saplings used in our Big Digs. Battery recycling is a big success. We are still collecting a boxful of batteries a week. All are sent to Holland where they are stripped down and their components are recycled.
Big Dig 3 At last we had fine weather for a dig! It was cold, but sunny and dry and this time the team planted hedgerow species on the bank behind the science pond. It was good to see that many tutor groups in Years 7 and 8 sent representatives to plant a tree for their tutor group. Thanks to Stacey Priddle for arranging this and to Mrs Chalk with helping with the organisation of students on the day.
Frogspawn! On the day of Big Dig 3, much to the delight of the digging team, the first frogspawn of the season was discovered in the science pond. The date was immediately sent to BBC's Springwatch as part of their phenology campaign. This spawn is three weeks later than last year's.
CD, CD ROM and DVD recycling Unused, unwanted or finished with CDs, CD ROms or DVDs are being collected by the music department as they can be recycled. They can be brought into tutor groups or can go straight to music. So don't throw away those 'connect to the internet free' CDs: bring them in.
Christmas card recycling  Once again, Christmas cards were collected by the ladies in both Reception and the Prep Room for the Woodland Trust. This year we collected 12 black sacks full - enough to almost fill the huge collecting bin at Tesco. Thanks to all who brought them in.
Big Dig 2 It was WET, DARK and COLD, but they wanted to dig! Thirty small hazel saplings were planted behind the recreation centre by this enthusiastic group. The trees were donated by the Woodland Trust as part of their 'Tree for All' campaign.
Tulipwatch We managed to obtain some of the Gardener's World 'Spring Green' tulip bulbs as part of the national trials for this bulb. On a warm evening in October, the bulbs were planted by this team of students.
Meet the Animals Thanks to the efforts of sixth formers Louise Fairless, Zoe Patterson,  Dan Loveys and Mike Keith, and to members of staff and the Eco team,  students were able to see, and sometimes to touch, a wide variety of animals. This included a scorpion, stick insects, a Scops owl, a rabbit, a dog, several snakes, a leopard gecko, a bearded dragon lizard, axolotls, giant land snails, and ferrets This was a great event, enjoyed by two hundred people that we will repeat sometime!     There wee many photos taken during this event which, like 'Meet the Birds', has its own web space here
Meet the Birds On the wettest lunchtime for many months (Thursday 3rd November), Louise Fairless gave an entertaining and authorative talk to a mixed group of students and staff about three birds of prey. Louise, one of our sixth form students, manages to fit in part time work at Liberty's Reptiles and Raptors, and we are very grateful to them for the loan of the birds. Lots of photographs accompanied this event, and it has its own page on the Eco-Schools site here.
Plastic milk bottle tops In October, Liz and Harriet  launched a new campaign to collect milk bottle tops. Red, green, blue or WHITE plastic milk bottle tops are all being collected for Naomi House, a children's hospice at Stockbridge, near Winchester. The hospice can raise money from them by sending literally millions of tops to Portsmouth for recycling   LATEST NEWS ON BOTTLE TOPS This has been a hugely successful campaign. We are collecting THOUSANDS of tops! But PLEASE don't collect and bring in other tops. We've had soft drinks tops, fruit juice tops, instant gravy tops, shampoo bottle tops, bottled water tops - you name it, we've had it. They are NOT wanted, and if they are included in a bag of milk bottle tops, the recycling firm simply throw the entire bag away as they don't have time to sort. Neither do we. In a batch of 10 000 tops, one rogue top will spoil the lot! SO please help here. As a reminder, we're collecting milk bottle tops that look like this!  All you have to do is wash them and bring them into school, so if you haven't supported this already, please do. Tops are collected in tutor groups.
Fair Trade and Local Food   ECO SCHOOLS  LOCAL FOOD AND FAIR TRADE LUNCH   On October 16th, about forty environmentally conscious students, together with staff and governors, enjoyed a lunch with a difference: Fair Trade goods or food that was locally produced was brought in to share. Food varied from home-made meringues with home-grown strawberries and locally-produced cream, to pork pie, home-produced bread, jam, tomatoes, desserts and flans. Fair Trade chocolate, Geo bars, fruit juice and tea completed the meal. The meal table was decorated by a vase of fair Trade roses sent in by a parent.   This is the Eco group’s second local and Fair Trade lunch. As before, with the exception of the fair Trade products, no food had travelled further than about 20 miles. Thus reducing the number of ‘food miles’ involved. Articles about our first locally produced food and Fair Trade lunch appeared in the local papers. See Ben's NEWSPAPER ARTICLE here.