The Eco-school programme
Image of Alperton students holding the Echo-schools flag
The Eco Schools is the largest educational programme in the world, engaging millions of pupils across 70 countries, empowering children to drive change and raise environmental awareness.
The schools are joining the programme to enable young people to create and implement solutions for existing environmental issues in their school and the wider community.
Thanks to the passion and commitment of our Eco committee, our Green Flag award was renewed in August 2022 and we are planning to continue our Eco school work this year starting with Recycling Week taking place in October. Students will learn to challenge their recycling behaviour. Each classroom now has a mixed recycling bin to improve recycling in the school.
An Eco Committee formed of teachers, STL members, Governors and Eco Reps from year 7, 8, 9 and 10 lead the Eco School programme at Alperton.
The Eco committee will campaign to raise awareness about environmental issues and encourage students as well as the community to adopt an eco-friendly attitude on a daily basis.
Recycling paper and reducing plastic waste are the top priorities set by the Committee, who is determined to work hard in order to improve the school and the local environment, so ACS can achieve the Green Flag Award.
ACS Action Plan
WASTE, BIODIVERSITY and TRANSPORT are the 3 Eco school topics chosen by the ACS Eco committee.
ACS Eco committee’s aspirations are:
- Reducing waste and increasing recycling
- Developing biodiversity in school and local area
- Encouraging young people to use more sustainable means of transports
ACS ECO Code
ACS ECO Events
Working towards ACS Green Flag Award Renewal, the Eco committee students carried out their Eco School work initiatives. In spring term, the Eco Committee completed an Environmental Review to evaluate the strengths and areas of development in regards to ten environmental topics (Waste, Litter, Marine, Biodiversity, Transport, School grounds, Global citizenship, Energy, Water and healthy living). According to their findings, the Eco committee decided to focus their action plan on Waste, Biodiversity and Transport topics.
So far, the Eco Committee students ran a successful paper-recycling programme to reduce paper waste, and took part in a litter pick on the canal during the Great British Spring Clean.
In May, a few Eco leaders participated in a workshop in collaboration with the Canal and River Trust. They created wooden bug hotels to increase biodiversity in their school playground and local community. Students found the workshop really enjoyable as they built bug hotels with friends using real tools. A student quoted “I loved seeing the bug hotel come to life as we put it together.” We would like to encourage families to create their own bug hotels to support insect life in their own gardens by providing instructions for DIY bug hotels.
In June, ACS organised a walk or cycle to school week encouraging students to use sustainable means of transport and to raise awareness of the health benefits of walking and cycling to school.
In July we invited MP Barry Gardiner to join our staff and students for a Student-MP Climate Surgery. It was a very interesting and stimulating discussion about climate change and its impact on all walks of life. Barry spoke with great passion about the grave dangers of climate change and engaged in a question and answer session with our sixth form geography and politics students
