Sustainability & Eco School
Ewell Caslte School awarded Eco School Green Flag with Distinction
Ewell Castle School has been awarded Eco-School Green Flag with Distinction. A great example of through-school collaboration as pupils and staff from the Prep School Eco Club and Senior School Wild Bunch worked together to focus on areas of energy, litter and waste.
The Eco Schools organisation was particularly impressed with how different departments have embedded sustainability within the curriculum at both the Prep and Senior School sites. They noted "It's fantastic to see that environmental issues have become an integral part of your learning. The examples provided demonstrate how staff members have effectively used this environmental focus to enhance lessons and learning. Pass on my thank you to the staff members who have willingly adapted their lessons to align with an environmental and sustainability focus." They also noted "Our team has been astounded by your amazing application. Our only concern is that we might not been able to express in words how impressed and grateful we are to have educators who go so far above and beyond to engage young people in environmental action. Congratulations on your Eco-Schools Green Flag with Distinction."
How did we achieve our Green Flag with Distinction?
The Wild Bunch Eco Club provides a great opportunity for our pupils to develop their social responsibility as well as build skills of empathy. At the Senior School we started with an audit to see where we were at. This allowed us to plan action that would have meaningful impact for our school. By auditing our energy use, we quickly learned that we were wasting electricity when the school was closed! Therefore, running a ‘switch-off’ campaign allowed the school to reduce its electricity use by an average of 23% across all school sites during the first year. An achievement which pupils and staff are very proud of. We now need to remember to continue to switch off electrical appliances and lights when not in use, and look at ways we can further reduce our consumption.
We also analysed our waste management systems and ensured that we effectively recycled our waste by providing education, awareness and improved facilities to minimise our impact and reduce pollution. We even have a hot composter for our kitchen waste that we cna then use on the school's flower beds, and a textile recycling facility on site for old uniform that can’t be sold by our PTAs New2U sales and is not accepted by charity shops.
Our focus on litter was around education and awareness, informing our school community where our litter ends up. An estimated 8 million metric tonnes of plastic enters our ocean every year (Jambeck et al 2015) and so ensuring that litter that has leaked out of the waste stream is intercepted (by us picking it up and disposing of it properly) is important for us to minimise plastic leakage from the waste stream – we don’t want it to end up in the ocean.
What’s next on our sustainability journey?
The Senior School Wild Bunch Eco Club continues to run weekly and this year, we are building on last year’s success as well as focusing on biodiversity and the school grounds. We have already carried out a biodiversity audit which highlights how both our main Senior School site and the Prep School site are perfectly placed to act as nature corridors between the Hogsmill Nature Reserve and Nonsuch Park. We have taken the amazing opportunity to work with Surrey Wildlife Trust as part of their Wilder Schools Programme. This sees our pupils working alongside wildlife experts from the Trust to develop areas in the school grounds that encourage biodiversity and habitats for wildlife. An exciting pupil-led project that continues to be supported by the Sixth Form Student Leadership Team, Miss Earthrowl and Mr Watkinson.