As part of our work on the Litter and Waste Eco School’s topic, our pupils have been busy since August 2021 trying to cut the amount of litter in our grounds and in our two adopted streets, Maxwell Drive and St. Andrew’s Drive. You can see some of our photos below of our litter picking in the local area and in our school grounds.

As well as picking up the litter,  we run surveys to see what types of litter there are. This has helped us to see what we need to do to tackle this. As ever, we get the strangest of items turning up in our litter surveys. In previous years, we found diver’s flippers, six inch lime green stiletto shoes and half a bike. In our latest litter picks, metal forks, hub caps and pots and pans turned up.

P5 on a litter survey in our school grounds

Litter Survey in our adopted streets. Look how clean we left St. Andrew’s Drive. Not one piece of litter in sight!

Here is the summary of all the entries on our survey team’s sheets. As you can see the sweet wrappers are the biggest part of the litter problem in our school grounds.

Crisp packets and sweet wrappers are always the worst offenders in our school grounds and plastic bottles also used to be one of the biggest contributors to our litter problem, until the council stopped providing bottled water in the dinner hall. The Eco Committee have discussed these issues at their meetings and they decided that we would start recycling our crisp packets with Terra cycle initially. This was a scheme whereby you could collect and return crisp packets and they would be made into insulation blankets for homeless people. Unfortunately, this scheme ended and now we take our crisp packets to Tesco for recycling.

Here is Kasim with our bags of weighed crisp packets, ready to go to Tesco to be recycled.

The Eco Committee has proposed that pupils unwrap their sweets or snacks at home and put them into their lunchboxes, to be eaten straight from there at play times, as a way to stop the sweet wrappers ending up scattered across the playgrounds. We hope to introduce this idea in the new year as well as provide parents with a leaflet on how to make pupil’s packed lunches more sustainable. The leaflet will be based on the research that P4-7 pupils have been tasked with, for our Waste-Free Packed Lunch Competition. Pupils should undertake some research at home and make  a poster with a labelled diagram of what a waste free lunch should be, in terms of packaging and food. The deadline for com petition entries has been extended to the first week back after the holidays and winners will be announced at our Walking Bus Assembly in the new year.

Another way to stop waste going to landfill sites is to have a Book and Toy swap Day and this is exactly what we did. Pupils brought along their old, unwanted toys or books to our event and had the chance to see what was on offer. They had to agree to swap their items for something they wanted. There were lots of happy faces at the end of the event as pupils went home with something they wanted.

Switch Off Fortnight Success

The Eco Committee used the calculator on The Pod’s  website to calculate our carbon savings over Switch Off Fortnight and we found that by turning off lights  and by switching off other electrical items when they didn’t need to be on, we saved 129 kg of CO2 from entering the earth’s atmosphere. We are proud of this achievement. We also saved 504 kWh s of electricity and 385 m 3 of gas. We worked out that if we keep up with our energy saving efforts for the rest of the school year, we could save  1393 kg of CO2.

Active Travel Grant Award Success

We found out last week that we have been awarded an Active Travel/ Outdoor Learning  grant of £2700 to buy the high visibility clothing for the adults and children who will be taking part in our walking bus scheme in the new year. We are delighted to have been so lucky and this money will come in very useful to help get our walking bus going and reduce the numbers of cars in the morning and at 3 p.m. each day and so reduce our school’s carbon footprint.

Fighting Climate Change by Composting

Last Week P 4-7 attended a Composting assembly in the school Hall, run by the Eco Committee. As we make our own compost in our Eco garden at St. Albert’s to use in growing fruit and vegetables, we wanted all our pupils to be aware of what composting is and why we should do it. Pupils watched a presentation about this subject and were reminded about the different bins we used for collecting and recycling food waste, crisp packets and plastic bottles, so they dispose of these items in the correct bins. At the end of the presentation, pupils took part in  a quiz to earn points for their house groups, Earth, Wind or Fire.  The Eco Committee added these points to their monthly totals. The pupils learned that if food waste isn’t composted and is sent to a landfill site, where it is dumped by the bin men, it releases greenhouse gases to the atmosphere such as  Methane, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at contributing to global warming. They also learned that food scraps contain a lot of water and when combined with all the other rubbish in landfill sites, to create a toxic sludge. This sludge leaches into the soil and can get into groundwater and from there into rivers and lakes, harming the creatures that live there. They learned that the  types of items that we want pupils  to add to our compost bins are as follows:

WHAT CAN GO IN OUR COMPOST BINS

1. All fruit except citrus fruits like lemons, oranges, tangerines, limes and grapefruits.
2. Twigs and sticks.
3. Shredded or torn up paper.
4. Grass cuttings (if you haven’t used weedkiller on the grass)
5. Newspaper
6. Corrugated cardboard boxes.
7. Shredded toilet paper rolls
8. Old cotton towels and sheets cut up
9. Dead leaves
10. Egg shells and egg cartons
11. Brown paper shopping bags

The pupils were told that they can bring in some of these items to add to our three part composter in the Eco garden and in return, they will earn house points.

Earlier this year, Primary 5 were the winners in our Eco Competition to win the highest  house points, for carrying out Eco Actions throughout the year. There was stiff competition, especially from the infant department who kept their playground free of litter through their litter picking efforts and the points totals were close.

As a result, Primary 5 were taken to Prestwick Beach for the day. In addition to having fun splashing in the waves, they undertook a beach litter survey. At first glance, there didn’t appear to be very much litter on the beach, but by the end of the day, after weighing the bags they filled, they found they had removed 8 Kg of litter from the sand. This litter would have proved deadly to marine creatures if swept out to sea, or to  birds, who could mistake it for food and the children were proud that they could have saved these animals.  Here are some of the photos of their day at the beach.

We are in the middle of Switch Off Fortnight 2022. This is an annual energy saving  campaign from EDF’s The Pod, which  is an opportunity for  schools and young people to make small changes in their lives that save energy and help to protect the planet. This year 1656 schools across Britain are taking part.

Switch Off Fortnight began this month in our school, with a launch assembly delivered by our Sustainability Committee. The aim was to make our pupils understand why climate change is happening, its consequences for humanity and nature and to help them see how they can play their part at school and home to lower their carbon footprints. As Climate Action is one of our three whole school Eco topics we are working on to earn our next green flag, we thought taking part would be a great thing to do.  You can see our launch assembly in the photos below.

During these two weeks, the Sustainability Committee will be collecting gas and electricity readings with the help of Mr Moss, our Eco friendly janitor at the beginning and end of each week to calculate how much of these resources our school has used. We hope to see a drop in our energy use across these two weeks, compared to our usual meter readings. Pupils and staff are being encouraged to switch off lights and other electrical items around the school, whenever their use is not necessary, in line with our school energy policy.

Our school is taking part in the Recycle to Read pilot run by EDF Energy’s The Pod website. Recycle to Read is a ground-breaking new Pod campaign that rewards schools for collecting unwanted plastic toys and tech for recycling/reuse, in exchange for books.

The campaign  helps children understand the benefits of reuse and recycling and the importance of responsible consumption and production to care for the environment. It helps to  reduce the quantity of plastic toys and tech placed in landfill, or being dumped or incinerated. It also assists  industry research to help make toys ‘recycle ready’ for more efficient processing as well as creating a circular economy for plastic toys and new recycling infrastructure.

We are looking for donations of old unwanted plastic toys (not electrical toys though) and working tech items to exchange for books for our children to add to class libraries. Even broken toys can be donated. We have two collection bins near the Eco Notice Board in the school hall where you can deposit toys and working tech items. When these are full, we can arrange for them to be uplifted and the school will receive recycling reward points depending on the value of the items collected. An item worth £1 = 1 reward point.  These points can then be swapped for a credit voucher code to buy books on the Collins website.

The file attached gives more information on the types of items that can be donated. Click on the link to open it. Please have a look at home and see what you could donate to help us get free books for our pupils.

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In October,  some of the Eco Committee of St. Albert’s joined children from schools  all over Glasgow to help create a new children’s woodland at a 13 hectare site at the Cathkin Braes in Glasgow. This was part of the Lost Woods Project and our pupils worked hard to plant as many Oak and Rowan saplings as they could, which will grow into a fantastic new woodland which will benefit the local community and provide future habitat for many species of animals, plants and fungi. These trees will also help to absorb carbon- dioxide from the atmosphere thus helping to fight climate change and will still be alive hundreds of years into the future. The children were proud to take part in this wonderful project and had a great time on the day, meeting some great characters and joining in with a song. Here are some photos from the event.

Some great news today. St. Albert’s Primary has just been awarded a 6th Green Flag from Eco Schools Scotland. It has been a difficult journey these past two years with Covid 19 and lockdowns causing many delays and interruptions to our Eco work, but we tried hard to find ways around problems and the whole community helped us to gain this award. A big thank you to all the pupils, teachers, parents and our partners in the local area, especially The Hidden Gardens, Pollokshields and The Simon Community for helping us on this journey.

June has been a busy month for us especially in the Eco garden. We have been working on our Food for Life Plant and Share project, growing our organic potato, strawberry  and carrot plants outdoors in the summer sunshine and we have had great success with them. Classes have been growing vegetable and herb plants on their windowsills in class and  today they were all taken to The Simon Community building in Pollokshields.  They will be planted and grown on in the garden there and harvested soon for cooking. We also shared some Chives with the Hidden Gardens in Pollokshields who have been growing them on for us and have now shared them with The People’s Pantry in Govanhill, some of whom are members at the Hidden Gardens. In these photos, you can see our chives being received at the Hidden Gardens by Andrea and by the People’s Pantry. You can also see pupils from our school at The Simon Community in Pollokshields after just dropping off all our potato, carrot, bean, strawberry, rocket and lettuce plants from our Plant and Share project. We hope that next year we can continue to grow fruit and vegetables and share our produce with the local community.

Chive plants grown by Primary 3 were shared with Andrea and Rhona at The Hidden Gardens and The People’s Pantry Govanhill.

St. Albert’s pupils delivering vegetable, fruit and herb plants from our Eco garden to The Simon Community, Pollokshields.

Also, this week our wonderful janitor Mr Moss, transformed a large  branch that we found in the school grounds into a habitat for Solitary Bees  by drilling centimetre wide holes into it for them to make homes in. Pollinators, including solitary bees, carry out a vital role in pollinating our crops, and also flowers and trees. In some parts of China pollination is already being undertaken by hand using paintbrushes because there are no bees left to do it naturally. We used to think that honey bees were the biggest contributors to crop pollination but that simply isn’t the case today, all types of bees are important.  He embedded the post into the centre of our older wildflower patch where we have plants such as Perennial Cornflower, Red Campion, Lavender, Poppies and Shasta Daisies to provide them with nectar. Here you can see him with his creation. You can also see our finished  bug hotel and the old recycling bins that were adapted to use as wheelbarrows for carrying

Mr Moss the janitor with our Solitary Bee habitat

The bees can land on the stones and drink water in our bee watering tower made from and old plant pot and dish.

Our new bug hotel which will provide homes for bees and many other insects.

Our recycled bin wheelbarrows can be used to transport canes, pots, plants and other gardening items wherever we need them.

Primary 5 had put in a lot of hard work this year to create another wildflower patch  so as to increase the plant biodiversity in our Eco garden and provide more nectar for pollinating insects. They had calculated the dimensions of the size of the new flower bed they were going to make so they could edge it with all the edging stones we got from Gumtree. Then earlier in the year they had dug out the grass, laid the edging stones and sowed a mixture of wildflower plants. Here you can see the wildflowers are in bloom and are providing food for many types of bee as we found out in a recent bumblebee survey at this site.

Primary 5 undertaking a bee survey at our new wildflower patch.

Our new wildflower patch contains plants such as Borage, Lacy Phacelia, Catchflies and Herb Robert which have been a hit with the local bee population and especially Carder Bees and White and Buff tailed Bumblebees.

Bumblebee collecting nectar from Lacy Phacelia.

Close ups of the wildflowers.

Here you can see the results of the Bumblebee survey P5 undertook at the new wildflower patch in our Eco garden.

As part of our School Grounds topic, the Eco Committee ran a survey for P4-7 pupils to find out about what the pupils would like to see in their playground. We have been working with the Parent Council of St. Albert’s this year and they have taken the children’s wishes into consideration. This summer there will be members of the local community who will be working in our grounds to make these dreams a reality. Click on this link below to see  the results of the survey:

Results of Upper school ground survey P4 to P7

As part of our Eco Schools topic on Biodiversity, P7 pupils had used the Seek app from iNaturalist to survey the plant and trees in all areas of our school grounds to create a database of plant life.  They recorded all species names an locations on an Excel document on their iPads. These results have been added to a map of our grounds as a record for the future. The plants we have added to our school grounds this year were highlighted in yellow as a way of measuring change. We can update this document over the years to see how the biodiversity is thriving or being affected by climate change. Here you can see the many species we have in our grounds if you click on these words and the blue link that appears. We were surprised at the sheer variety of plant biodiversity in our grounds.

biodiversity data st Alberts grounds updated FINAL