To celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd our Eco Reps led assembly this week with Mr Livings, Head of Geography. Earth Day 2022 is the chance for us all to seize the moment to make change – to help protect, save and enhance our planet.

Although the world is undeniably heating up, with huge impacts including droughts and rising sea levels, there are reasons to be optimistic too.

Reps Amelia C, Agnes H, Rosie H, Holly L, Millie A, Charlotte T and Catrin S’ assembly featured examples of people taking action all over the world, including an ‘amazingly innovative solar powered ironing cart in India, that also doubles up a phone/device charger!

Our Reps spoke about political decisions which are affecting the environment nationally before focusing on what we can do as individuals to become more sustainable.

They spoke about Greenwashing and fast fashion – make sure you are confident you are buying from retailers who are more transparent in terms of the materials they use for making their clothes, their production processes and workers’ rights. Reduce your shopping habits  – do you really need that new t-shirt? The Reps then shared some eye-opening stats about just how much water is needed to make one cotton t shirt.

On Earth Day itself we held a display in the atrium where students were encouraged to write eco pledges on a leaf and help to make an Earth Day tree.

Students and staff contributed their pledges which ranged from promising to switch the lights off when leaving a room, to walking/cycling instead of taking the car, taking shorter showers, buying fewer clothes, making their bathrooms 100% sustainable and picking up litter when walking down the street.

Eco matters continue to play an important part of school life at NHEHS.

In the last couple of years, we have been working with our Eco reps to re-invigorate the pond and re-establish marine life there, while our Eco Reps have also run their own Anti-Idling Campaigns to discourage parents and local residents from leaving their car engines running unnecessarily at school drop off and pick up times. We organise an annual Eco Week in the autumn term and are currently  working towards gaining our TFL Stars Gold Award for clean travel in schools and environmental awareness which we hope to achieve by next summer. Our Year 10 and 11 students volunteer weekly to help out in our local parks with weeding, tidying and litter picking.

The environment also takes pride of place in our Geography Reps’ The Real World Podcast (listen in here). Our Eco Reps have also been able to monitor energy usage at school thanks to the Energy Sparks initiative. Through this online energy analysis tool, our Eco Reps have been empowered to identify opportunities for energy saving at school, space by space, hour by hour, and help us reduce our carbon footprint. through the analysis of smart meter data. We found out that last year our school used 1,500,000 kWh of gas – equivalent to the gas used by 110 UK homes in a year.

The Energy Sparks charity also aims to provide school pupils with life skills in understanding energy, learning about the problems of energy generation and climate change. There are also a number of activities which they can undertake to earn us points, reduce energy usage and compete against other GDST schools. The GDST itself recently launched a PenPal programme in partnership with Earth Warriors, connecting classrooms nationally and internationally to discuss climate change and sustainability. The GDST also published an Earth Day blog, which includes their approach to sustainability as well as the launch of the One world, One future, One chance ethos. 

Two of our Junior School teachers (Miss Farrell and Mrs Cassar) are now UN Certified Climate Change teachers while Ms Lindsay, Dr Pearce and Mr Coxhill are making great progress to achieving their awards later this summer.

Coming up we have Walk to School Week on the 16th May. Keep an eye out for future notices about how to get involved and help to reduce your environmental impact!