Eco-Council

Bronze Award

Brynmill Primary School has been part of the Eco-Schools Wales award programme since 2007. Working towards the Eco-Schools awards encourages our pupils to engage with environmental and sustainable development issues. The programme covers a number of areas:

• Litter
• Waste Minimisation
• Transport
• Healthy Living
• Energy
• Water
• School Grounds
• Global Citizenship

The pupils are central to the decision making process, taking charge of the ways in which the school reduces our environmental impact. In this way, the Eco-Schools programme and philosophy extends learning beyond the classroom and develops responsible citizenship attitudes both at home and in the wider community.

In November 2009, after a great deal of effort by the members of our children’s Eco-Council ably guided by Miss S Breeze, the school gained our Bronze Award. The action areas were:

• To reduce the amount of waste produced
• To reduce the amount of water used
• To reduce the amount of energy used
• To gain the Healthy Schools Phase 2 Award

All four areas have been successful and achieved their aims.

The children who bring packed lunches to school recycle all of their cardboard and plastic waste. In addition, food waste is recycled by all our children. Paper is recycled in every classroom, along with the office. The children have also established a mobile phone recycling scheme in the school.

The children have been monitoring their water usage with our caretaker, Mr Thomas, on a weekly basis. They held a poster competition to encourage everyone to turn off the taps around the school; the winning entry is now displayed at every sink. In order to encourage everyone to save electricity the children held a sticker competition, the winning entry is on every light switch around the building.

After a lot of hard work by everyone involved, the school has now passed the Healthy Schools Phase 2 Award.

We are now busily working toward our Silver Award which we hope to complete this year.