Callystown National School Website, Clogherhead, Co. Louth, Ireland

The aim of the Green Schools programme is to move from environmental awareness in the curriculum to environmental action in the school and the wider community. The Seven steps of the Green Schools programme are:

1. Green School's Committee

This directs the school's involvement in the programme. Prior to election of a formal committee the staff who were going to lead our environmental programme agreed that pupil representatives should be from 2nd to 6th Class, with the younger classes involved in the overall programme through taking part in a number of actions in our Action Plan suitable for their age.Our Green School's Committee held their first meeting on 25th January 2007. Meetings are held monthly for approximately 20-30 minutes. The present committee members are as follows:

Teachers: Mr. McGinnity (Principal), Ms. Callaghan (co-ordinator), Ms. Burke, Ms. Deery,

Non Teaching Staff: Kathleen King & Gordon Hay

Councillor: Jacqui Mc Conville

2nd Class: Patrick, Moya, Niamh and Morgan.

3rd Class: Aoife, Ryan, Holli and Morgan.

4th Class: Clodagh, Adam & Eirin.

5th Class: Clare, Daragh and Kristian.

6th Class: Ciara (Secretary) & James (Chairperson)

Past Pupils: Sarah & Michael.

Parents: Gráinne Campion & Susan Montague

At present, James chairs the meetings and is assisted, when needed by the Environmental Co-Ordinator Mrs. Callaghan. The minutes are recorded by Ciara and Ms. Burke. Decisions are arrived at through discussion around the table where everybody gets the opportunity to put their suggestions and ideas forward and we have found that this has worked very well with no difficulties encountered in agreeing what has to be done.

2. Environmental Review

This is a process of examining the school's environmental impacts in order to identify targets for action and improvement. Our environmental review was carried out by children in classes from 2nd to 6th. Each class from 2nd to 6th was given a written questionnaire to be completed in class, the results of which were analysed by the Environmental Co-Ordinator with the Committee. The questions in the sample Environmental Review were used by us as were suggestions provided to us at a Workshop organised by Louth County Council which allowed us to hear how different schools in the county carried out their reviews. We also visited the other parish school of St. Paul’s in Walshestown who received their Green Flag last year and they were very helpful in advising us on how to go about our Review and indeed our Action Plan. The Junior Classes were also involved although in a much more informal way and what we decided here was that the class teacher would lead a discussion with the pupils, at sufficient level for their age, and the teacher would then report back to the committee so that the ideas of the younger pupils could also be captured.

3. Action Plan

This gives specific and achievable targets with proposed completion dates that will show real success. Our Action Plan was agreed by the committee using all the suggestions that had been made in the Review, both formal and informal. At the end of the day we set ourselves three clear goals that we felt were ambitious enough to challenge us but realistic enough to be achievable.

Goal 1 - To Reduce Waste in the School by 30% by November by Reducing Reusing and Recycling

Goal 2 – To Enhance the Physical Appearance of the School and the Environs by creating a Litter Free Zone

Goal 3 – To educate and promote awareness among our school and local community of the benefits of a cleaner and greener environment

We then set about assigning each of the actions that emerged from the Review process to the relevant Goal and we made sure that as many people as possible were involved in delivering the various actions by assigning them to individuals, groups or classes who would then be responsible for ensuring that they were carried out.
We highlighted when we would carry out each action as well and that helped us to review our progress at meetings.

Our Action Plan was then produced in table format using a colourful background so that when we displayed it around the school it would be eye-catching enough for both teachers and pupils as well as visitors to the school to notice.

4. Monitoring & Evaluation

LITTER

Litter is monitored first of all through our daily litter patrols whereby the task of not simply removing the litter, but also recording problems is assigned to a team of pupils who bring the results back to the Environmental Co-Ordinator . Small problems identified resulted in a discussion at our monthly committee meeting, following which, a notice is issued to each class teacher highlighting the problems and asking for remedial action to be taken by the class.

We supplement this with a litter blitz once a month which deals with any blackspots that may have been detected in the previous month that could not be dealt with on our daily patrols and overall we have seen a massive increase in the cleanliness rating, not just of the school but in the local housing estate which had caused problems for a period of time.

WASTE

The first point that we would have to make here is that when we really started implementing our waste minimisation programme to try to get to our 30% reduction we found it difficult to do so because we felt that the types of material we could dispose of through the green bin system with our service provider was insufficient for our needs particularly given that at that stage we couldn’t deposit plastic drink bottles in the bin. We decided at a committee meeting that we would do some research to see if there was a different service provider operating in the area who would provide a better recycling option for us and when we found that to be the case we changed service provider with remarkable results. It is probably important to say that the County Council has since advised us that our original service provider is now taking plastic and we would like to think that it was customers like ourselves looking for the best service possible that would have led them to expand their service in this way.

Before we commenced our huge recycling programme and before we changed our service provider we worked out that we were on average putting out three green bins and four black bins for collection.

At this stage we are now composting as much of our waste as we can and have improved our waste reduction and recycling to the extent that we are now putting out four green bins to only one black bin which is 75% full showing a remarkable 81% reduction of waste to landfill, well in excess of the realistic target of 30% we set ourselves at the outset. The above Charts highlight this progress and are also on display in the school to show the success of our waste reduction scheme.

Reduction in paper use

As well as recycling we also tried to focus on reduction of paper usage by ensuring we always used both sides of the paper. We kept a note of the quantity of paper used on a monthly basis and, taking into account seasonal fluctuations, our monitoring indicates that we now use an average of 942 pages less per month, which is good news for our environmental programme and our stationery budget.

5. Linking With the Curriculum

English: Slogans, poems, articles for newsletter, letters, minute taking etc.

Maths: Counting and monitoring of paper use, graphs and charts etc

Art: Posters (list of prize-winners attached, appendix 5), reuse of materials

Science: Learning about composting, decomposition of waste, beach activity day

Religion: Learning to take care of our environment

SPHE: Civic responsibility

Computers: Graphs, charts

Geography: Coastline Study

6. Informing and Involving

Local Newspaper Coverage - We received coverage for our composting workshop in the local newspaper and as a result of our participation in the local awards scheme we also received coverage. We continue to liaise with the local media to promote our activities.

National Spring Clean – We carried out a major clean up and were delighted when one of our photographs was used on An Taisce’s National Spring Clean Newsletter which raised our profile as this Newsletter would also have been circulated to a number of residents associations in the Clogherhead area.

~ Assembly announcements/updates, given on a monthly basis.

~ Clogherhead Development Group – we liaise with them on a regular basis and have received support from them as required as we worked through our actions.

~ Greenschool Notice Board – Relocated to the main entrance to create impact for all visitors. Regularly updated and full of information about our progress.

~ Newsletter – We produced a very informative newsletter and distributed it to all parents so that they would be informed of our work for the Greenschool Programme.

Website – we are in the process of developing our Greenschool website as part of www.callystownnationalschool.ie and under “Our Projects” section regular news updates of our Greenschool success will be available. We expect the site to be fully operational by the end of November 2007.

OUR DAY OF ACTION

In the last year we have had a number of days of action all of which have been very enjoyable and very successful.

National Spring Clean – We carried out a major litter blitz not alone of our school grounds but went out into the local community and cleaned up around the tennis courts and local bring banks as well as along paths in the village. The day was a huge success, we recycled the various waste streams as we went along and felt that it was a very worthwhile Day of Action because we had the satisfaction of doing something positive in our local community.

In-school Day of Action - In May 2007 we had a great Day of Action in the school when we were hosts to a series of visitors who all gave us very interesting and educational workshops and presentations on the various themes we had been working on. Sarah Fields from the Irish Wildlife Trust gave a brilliant composting workshop which really got the children interested in and enthusiastic about composting and we believe that this was a trigger for the success of our own composting scheme.

The County Council Litter Warden also attended on the day and he spoke with the pupils on the problems of littering and showing examples of problems caused by litter in our community. There was great excitement, particularly among the younger pupils, when he introduced his friend Auntie Litter Bug and this let the pupils see that while managing litter was hard work there could also be a fun side to it. The Litter Warden judged our poster competition and Auntie Litter Bug awarded the prizes donated by the County Council to the winning pupils which caused great excitement.

The Litter Warden also presented the committee with litter pickers and tabards to help us with our litter patrol and we have been using them ever since.

Our third Day of Action was most enjoyable and took place in June when Louth County Council invited the senior pupils of the school to a beach activity day on Port beach in celebration of the raising of the Blue Flag for the 2007 season. The pupils engaged in an ecology walk of the beach, learned about the different flora and fauna and then took part in some fun activities like building sand castles for which the County Council awarded prizes. They also received a little talk on recycling and it was very educational given that we were going for the Green Flag ourselves and were, as part of our activity, learning about the Blue Flag which also flies in our community. A specialist company had been engaged by the County Council to undertake the ecology walk and all of the pupils really enjoyed the day and the refreshments that followed.

7. Our Green Code

A competition was held to design the schools Green Code with the eventual winner being Jane Sharkey, 4th Class whose simple but effective slogan has become our Code/Motto for environmental activity.

�Scoil N�isi�nta Baile na gCailleach, Ceann Chlochair, Co. L�.