Our Year 10 Eco Reps, together with Mrs Cassar and Mr Khan, gave a great assembly yesterday on COP28 – what it means to us, what the government is doing to achieve its goals, what we are doing at school to support that plus the many different ways our school community can help. 

The Conference’s key objectives are to discuss climate issues and re-establish goals to limit the Earth’s rising temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 and strategies to achieve NetZero by 2050. On the agenda this year is fast-tracking the move to clean energy sources, to cut greenhouse gas emissions before 2030, delivering money for climate action from richer to poorer countries, and working on a new deal for developing nations while making the conference the most inclusive ever with a focus on nature and people.

Mrs Cassar emphasised the importance of us understanding as a community the impacts of climate change and how it will affect future generations. She spoke about what the UK government is doing to meet these goals, including offshore wind farming, carbon capture storage, banning new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, tree planting to cutting emissions in manufacturing.

We were introduced to our Eco Representatives this year, who will be led by Mr Khan (overseeing sustainability) and Mrs Cassar (Environment and Sustainability Coordinator). We will have leaders in the Sixth Form as well as our Year 10 Eco Leaders Yara A F, Katerina G, Claire I and Aditi R, and Eco Form Reps throughout the School. In the Senior School there’s also two extra-curricular clubs (pond club, sustainability club) and in the Junior School there’s Eco Warriors Club.

Our Eco Representatives will be encouraging our whole school community to take part in a number of green initiatives. These include: Walk to School Week, Meat Free Mondays, tree planting, a form plant competition, enrichment activities (environmental studies, bee keeping, DofE, keeping the parks tidy), using the secondhand uniform store and special eco events. NHEHS is TfL Gold Accredited and we are currently working towards our Green Flag Award (Eco Schools). We are also very proud of our sustainable Junior School building and will be monitoring our Co2 production every week across the whole site (printing, electricity, where does our rubbish go).

Our Year 10 Eco Leaders wrapped up the assembly with their top tips on how we can all help:

• Recycle (use the green bin)
• Turn off the lights when exiting the classrooms
• Close the windows when using the heater
• Wrap up warm before putting the heater on
• Be mindful of how many hand towels you are using
• Challenge yourself to walk, cycle or use public transport 
• Reduce printing 

Finally, our Junior Eco Reps also organised a fabulous Christmas Jumper swap so girls brought in a jumper from home to swap with others so they had something ‘new’ to wear at Christmas. 70 jumpers were happily swapped by girls from Reception up to Year 6!