As an Eco school, St. Albert’s Primary takes the problem of litter very seriously. Every lunch time, pupils work on a rota basis to clear the grounds of any litter that has been dropped, blown or thrown in to our grounds.

We also measure the success of our litter picking with surveys of the types and quantities of litter we find. We have found that some of our litter has not been dropped by our pupils due to the types we find, but rather has been thrown in by passing adults or has been removed by vandals from our bins and scattered.

Primary 5 recently carried out a litter survey in our grounds and weighed all the bin bags that we filled. The bags totalled 27Kg. Much of this weight was not due to sweet wrappers or crisp packets dropped by pupils, but was glass bottles thrown over our fences or hardware removed from our bins and scattered by vandals. The pupils understand that litter is harmful to wildlife and enjoyed removing it from our grounds.

Here are some pictures of them hard at work doing the Litter survey:

St. Albert’s Primary Eco Committee decided when we wrote our Eco Action plan that we would adopt the two streets on either side of our school, Maxwell Drive and St. Andrew’s Drive, for regular litter picking. This was because school grounds litter surveys have shown that some of the litter in our grounds is not the type to be dropped by our pupils, but rather has been thrown or blown in from outside. They had also noticed graffiti in the local area (which is another form of litter) and were keen to report this to the council so that it can be removed.

As we were not allowed to borrow extra litter picking kits from the council, due to current Covid restrictions, we decided to use some of the money in our school Eco fund to buy some extra kits that we could use instead. Our Eco fund is money that we raise ourselves through recycling textiles with the Rag Bag company.

Primary 6 walked up St. Andrew’s Drive collecting litter along the way and continued litter picking in Maxwell Park, before heading back to clean up Maxwell Drive. Not surprisingly, at this time of year,  used fireworks showed up in the litter survey results, but discarded face masks were also regularly seen on the ground. The litter collected filled 6 bin bags and these weighed a total of  6.4 Kg. They photographed examples of graffiti in our local area and recorded the locations and type of graffiti they found and these have been reported to the council so they can be removed. Here are some pictures of Primary 6 on their litter pick and graffiti hunt.

Primary 5 and some of our Eco Committee braved wind and rain on Friday afternoon to plant a hedge of Grey Willow and Crab Apples in the school Eco garden. Some children were so keen that they even skipped their afternoon play to continue working. The Eco Committee decided that we should plant a native species hedge in our grounds to improve Biodiversity and provide food and shelter for birds and other small creatures.

Grey willow foliage is eaten by caterpillars of a number of moths, including the sallow kitten, sallow clearwing, dusky clearwing and lunar hornet clearwing. It is also a food plant for the purple emperor butterfly. Catkins provide an important early source of pollen and nectar for bees and other insects, and birds use grey willow to forage for caterpillars and insects.

Crab Apple leaves are food for the caterpillars of many moths, including the eyed hawk-moth, green pug, Chinese character and pale tussock. The flowers provide an important source of early pollen and nectar for insects, particularly bees, and the fruit is eaten by birds, including blackbirds, thrushes and crows. Mammals, such as mice, voles, foxes and badgers, also eat crab apple fruit.

We hope that the hedge will soon become established and will benefit the many living creatures that visit and live in St. Albert’s school grounds in the years to come.

A big thank you to our P5 pupils for their hard work and care in this project.

Miss Brooks and the Eco Committee