Green Team presented Eco Schools’ Green Flag Award

Written by Mr Richard Yarlett, Head of History

“Since the Habs Girls Green Team was started last year, we have been exploring opportunities both in our own school community and the wider world to become more environmentally sustainable. Led by our President and Senior Prefect Miranda U6 MO), we have achieved the Eco Schools’ Green Flag Award, increased the biodiversity in our stunning school grounds and worked across all the year groups to increase awareness of sustainability issues and solutions.

We are recently acquired the prestigious green flag award. This award is given to schools who have specifically looked at three aspects of sustainability and have successfully implemented new changes into their schools. We focused on waste, biodiversity and energy. For this, our school community had to make an ‘eco code’, pledging to protect our environment and try to be more sustainable to help preserve our planet for future generations. We have audited our current school environment to identify the areas for improvement, which we have already started to work on, for example increasing the biodiversity at our school by putting up birdboxes made by students in DT.

Our Green Team has also been collaborating with Ms Lavelle and her allotment club to help increase awareness about the importance of biodiversity and the role it can play in sustainability. This term, the allotment club has re-purposed Christmas trees and pallets to create some luxurious new accommodation for insects on site. They have also installed some bee hotels made from reclaimed ash grown in Sussex, filled with hollowed out bamboo tubes. These will be placed in the corners of an exciting new Wildflower Walkway which will be grown along the outside of B block. Ms Lavelle has selected a mix of 26 varieties of bee-friendly plants which bloom over a long period to ensure maximum availability of food for bees and other pollinators, and we are delighted to witness a project that supports wildlife in such a way. There is a QR code plaque that visitors can scan to learn more about this project. We are very grateful to our lovely gardening team who have collaborated with Ms Lavelle to bring this project to life!

Another aspect that our Green Team has been working on is engaging our school community with environmental sustainability, ensuring all year groups are involved. One event we held was for Years 7 and 8, where the two year groups worked together in houses to create posters using recycled materials about the beautiful biodiversity we have here at Habs. We have also run a PSHCE session for Year 9 students, teaching about the importance of environmentalism and what there is us as individuals can do to make a difference. Following the Habs Girls Big Read, which took place over October half term, we ran a session on making climate change pledges, inspired by the issues raised in the book ‘Green Rising’, which was open to all year groups. This culminated in a tree made entirely from recycled cardboard and magazines which is now on display in our school as a reminder of our pledge to our planet. We have also been thrilled to be working with our Junior School Eco-Prefects, who have been bringing enthusiasm and exciting ideas to our team, inspiring many of our projects.

Looking ahead, we are planning to increase the involvement of more students by running the Year 7 Eco-Fashion Show and a Sustainable Design Session for Year 9 – two very highly anticipated events – as well as more exciting projects to continue to learn more about this very important issue whilst having fun and making other co-curricular links.”