Looking back to 2022, we had some great Eco events at our school, not least the visit from our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon and representatives from Eco Schools Scotland, during the Scottish government’s Climate Week and Climate Action Week.  During that week, St. Albert’s Primary took part in live lessons about Climate Change from Eco Schools Scotland. Primary 4  met the First Minister and they presented her with a letter that they had written, containing some of their ideas about how to save wildlife from climate change. They suggested planting native wildflower corridors on motorway verges and roadsides across the country to allow pollinators to find nectar and move between areas, pollinating crops as they go, and they also got  to chat to Andrea Gabriel from Eco Schools Scotland. Here are the photos from that day.

Another highlight from 2022 was our COP 26 march through the streets of Pollokshields to the local bowling green to  demonstrate our feelings about climate change at the time of the COP 26 conference in Glasgow.  We were joined by some children from other schools and members of the public, who also cheered us on as we progressed through the streets You can see photos of our march here.

After the warm summer of 2022, we got the best crop of apples in the school Eco garden that we have ever had. Class 3 made good use of them in their cooking sessions making apple muffins. They also made courgette muffins that had been grown in the Class 3 raised bed. Here is Kasim from our Eco Committee with some of our crop.

Back in May 2022 the Eco Committee wrote a letter to  the catering  and facilities management department for the Fuel Zone school meals asking some questions about sustainability in our school lunches, especially regarding all the plastic wrappings being used  on the food. We have found that sometimes single use plastic pots used for fruit portions in the dinner hall have  been turning up in our school grounds litter surveys, as have plastic water bottles in the past before they were removed from school dinners.  We then had a follow up visit from the company that supplies our school with fruit. They came to meet the Eco Committee  and hold a workshop all about fruit which included a sorting activity.  Here are the photos of the letter we sent, the meeting between our Eco Committee and Angela Ryan from Cordia and the fruit workshop.

The pupils asked if the fruit could be served from large bowls straight onto trays rather than every portion being served in  an individual plastic pot. They made some other suggestions about ways to replace milk cartons, for example serving milk from a jug or a chilled milk dispenser. As a result of their letter, Angela Ryan from Cordia came to our school to listen to and consider the children’s  proposals and discuss the single use plastics in the dinner hall. Since then we have found out that the small fruit pots are going to be phased out as soon as present stocks are used up and replaced with large  bowls from which the fruit will be served.  The polystyrene soup cups have also been replaced with reusable ones. We hope that there will be an alternative to individual milk cartons soon.

Further back in 2022, Primary 6 had a visit from some members of  environmental pressure group Extinction Rebellion, who came to give a talk on climate change and other environmental problems. They answered all the pupil’s questions and left us an amazing  gift in the form of a woven sea creature filled with plastic litter items which shows how our litter can end up in the sea and is consumed by the creatures that live there and kills them.  This is now hanging half way up our school staircase on the wall to serve as a reminder to all of the consequences of dropping litter in the playground, in the  street or on the beach. Here are the photos from that day:

Looking even further back in our current Eco journey, there was the upcycling workshop visit made by P5 to the Deep End venue of award winning upcycling social enterprise Rags to Riches, located in Nithsdale Street, Govanhill. Rags to Riches uses waste to promote environmental sustainability. community engagement and education in Glasgow and the surrounding areas. Using the circular economy model, they will upcycle a variety of waste materials such as textiles, wood and recycled plastics into new items that can be sold, including jewellery, t- light holders, bowls, bags and purses, chopping boards and planters.  Primary 5 helped to sort lids of plastic bottles by colour and saw how these can be processed in the machinery and remodelled into new items. We were very impressed with this amazing company’s work to stop unwanted items going to landfill and lower Glasgow’s carbon footprint. Here you can see Primary 5 learning about the whole plastic upcycling process.

This afternoon the Eco Committee of St. Albert’s Primary held an assembly about our forthcoming walking bus. The purpose of the assembly was to explain what a walking bus is to pupils and the benefits of travelling to school this way, for the environment and for the pupil’s own health and well being. At the end of the assembly lots of pupils raised their hands to show that they would be interested in taking part in our walking bus when it begins.

The assembly was also an opportunity to earn house points by answering questions about walking to school and how doing so can cut the school carbon footprint. From our three houses, Earth, Wind and Fire, Earth won 100 points for their house by answering questions correctly. Here are some photos from our assembly.

Last week, Class 3 took part in some litter picking activities in the upper school playground. They did a really good job of finding litter and enjoyed removing it. It is important to keep our school grounds litter free as litter, especially of the plastic variety, which can take anywhere from 20 to 500 years to decompose in the environment. It can also be washed down drains and enter rivers where it can kill wildlife and enter the food chain. Here are some pictures of Class 3 in action.

This week, some of the older members of our Eco Committee will be carrying out surveys to find out how sustainable our pupil’s packed lunches are in terms of packaging of foodstuffs. We hope to reveal the results in a future blog and produce a leaflet for parents on this, in the hope that we can reduce packaging that is contributing to the litter in the playground. When we have tried out our new ideas to tackle waste at its source and evaluated their success, we can formulate a waste policy for our school, to help tackle these problems in the future.

Tomorrow afternoon, the Eco Committee will be giving a presentation for pupils at our weekly assembly about our school’s forthcoming walking bus. We are working with members of the parent council and Lorna Young from D.R.S to get our walking bus up and running as soon as possible. This assembly presentation will demonstrate to pupils what a walking bus is and why it is a good way to travel to and from school, for the health and well being of our pupils and for the good of the environment. We hope that lots of pupils will want to sign up and join our walking bus when it starts.

In other news, the blue bin recycling services to our school have resumed and we are delighted. The Eco Committee can now continue collecting classroom waste paper and card and they will ensure that it goes into our new blue recycling bin that has been delivered to replace our last one that was broken. We still hope to receive an extra blue bin that has been requested, as two are needed for a school that recycles as much as we do. We hope to raise enough money through our Rag Bag recycling to replace our blue bags with pop-up bins for classrooms that are easy to carry and keep their shape.

The Great British Spring Clean (Keep Britain Tidy’s annual national clean-up campaign) runs from 17 March – 2 April this year and as ever St. Albert’s Primary will be involved. We will be taking part in the week beginning the 17th April and will be cleaning up the streets of Pollokshields. The litter problem has worsened lately in the local area and we hope to make a difference. At least two classes have agreed to take part and survey the litter and graffiti (which is a form of litter) in our area. The pupils will examine the results of this survey to see which are the most common forms of litter in Pollokshields and discuss what we can do about it. We hope that this will be a week when parents and other members of the local community will join in to help clean up our streets.