Green Schools

"TIDY UP, KEEP IT CLEAN, THINK OF OTHERS, DON’T BE MEAN"

We have been awarded our first Green Schools flag! 

Congratulations to everybody involved. 

We had a ceremony to raise our flag. Kathryn McKiernan from RTE TV visited the school and raised the flag. We had a great day.

We made Christmas decorations by reusing household packaging and waste!

This year we will be applying  for our Green Schools flag!

• Don't forget to take your waste from your lunch box home every day to raise awareness in your family about how much rubbish we are creating.  You could try to think of ways to create as little lunch waste as possible!

• This month we have litter wardens from 2nd and 4th Class patroling the yard at break times making sure you are putting your litter in the bin and not on the ground! 

• Every Thursday is a special paper awareness day.  Please remember not to use any paper unless you have to on a Thursday.  You could draw pictures in a notebook instead!

Our new Green Schools officers for 2009!

Our Green Schools Day of Action was on Tuesday, 26th May! 

Reports by 4^th class

On the 26^th May 2009 our school had its very own Green Day of Action.  It was really good fun because all of the classes did jobs like picking up litter in the area or harvesting the vegetables that we grew in the classroom.  The day of action is helping us on our way to earning our Green Schools flag. 

All the children were asked to wear a green item to school and lots of people did.  When you went into a classroom all you could see was green, green, green. 

Our class got to eat the lettuce and scallions that we grew in the classroom.   They were delicious.  We also had a talk from one of the South Dublin County Council members.  She talked to us about recycling and where all our rubbish ends up when we throw it out.  I learned that a glass bottle takes 100,000 years to disintegrate.

Overall the day was great fun and I hope we do it again.

Craig

 

I went into school wearing green because it was our school’s Green day of Action and the teachers asked us to wear green.  We got litter pickers and I got a partner, my partner was Sam.  Every class had a place to clear up the litter, our class did the school yard and the bushes. 

We grew our own vegetables.  We grew potatoes, scallions, strawberries, lettuce and cabbages but the potatoes and strawberries weren’t ready to eat.  The cabbages didn’t work out either.   We put all our chairs in a circle and we brought all our own plates, forks and knives.  A group washed the vegetables.  Some people brought in ketchup, mayonnaise and croutons and we had a salad.  Others put the lettuce in their sandwiches.

We had our Green Day of Action because we wanted to get our green flag for the school.  The benefit of today’s work is that we cleaned our school.

James

Trever Sargent's Visit

School Garden

During the Easter holidays the foundation for the school garden was built. This is a new and exciting project and we hope to involve the children in planting and maintaining the garden.  Many classes have already planted seeds which are growing with varying degrees of success!  We plan to get the garden planted up this term.  Paddy Madden who has written a guide on school gardening is coming to visit the school on 12^th May and should give us plenty of ideas.  Many thanks to the PTA for funding the garden landscaping.

We are working towards achieving Green Schools Status!

To be awarded our first Green Flag, we are concentrating on:

 1. Reducing the amount of litter on our school grounds

 2. Reducing the amount of waste we are producing

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Reducing our paper use

Our teachers noticed that they were throwing a lot of envelopes away from parents sending in money, cheques, consent forms, letters etc. To cut down on paper waste, our Green Schools committee have provided each child with a money bag labelled with their name. This is kept in the sleeve of their homework notebook and should be used by parents instead of an envelope.

So please use our money bags and help us to reduce our paper use!!

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The winners of 3rd Class's litter themed poster competition are:

JI: Charlie J.

SI: Ciara S.

1st Class: Matthew McI.

2nd Class: Rachel D.

3rd Class:  Robyn L.

4th Class:  Mel O'D.

5th Class:  Matthew R.

6th Class:  Dylan H

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Litter Awareness

6th Class won this month's cleanest classroom competition!

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Recycling

In 3rd Class, instead of throwing our rubbish away, we made works of art!

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Some projects being undertaken by our pupils and teachers

1. Regular litter patrols by Sixth Class

2. Cleanest classroom competitions

3. Ongoing recycling of paper and plastic containers

4. A drive to reduce the amount of waste from children's lunch boxes through the use of sandwich boxes and reusable drinks bottles

5. Bring Your Rubbish Home Days - to let parents see the amount of waste our lunches are producing

6. A poster competition run by Third Class to promote an awareness of litter locally and nationally

7. Reducing paper usage through initiatives such as No Photocopying Days and No Paper Days

8. An introduction of composting and a school garden

9. Art projects using recycled waste

10. An introduction of battery recycling

Green Schools

The Green-Schools education programme is an international initiative for the promotion and acknowledgement of environmental action taken by schools. Green-Schools takes environmental issues from the curriculum and applies them to the everyday running of a school. The programme aims to make students aware of environmental issues in their personal and social lives.

The Green-Schools programme can help schools to:

• Improve the School environment
  

• Reduce litter and waste
  

• Reduce fuel bills
  

• Increase environmental awareness
  

• Involve the local community
  

• Gain local publicity
  

• Create links with other schools in Ireland and abroad

In Ireland, Green-Schools is run by An Taisce in co-operation with Local Authorities throughout Ireland and is sponsored by Coca-Cola Bottlers Ireland Ltd. and The Wrigley Company Ltd. along with leading integrated waste management company Greenstar. For more information on the Green-Schools program click here

Currently there are about 349 Primary, Secondary and Special schools participating in the programme, all over the Dublin region. Green-Schools is both a programme and an award scheme. Schools that successfully complete the Seven Steps of the programme are awarded a Green Flag. About 95 schools within the four Dublin local authorities have attained the Green Flag.

Please contact us with any ideas you may have at rpnsgreen@gmail.com