ecoclub@bushloe

In Eco Club we went outside to do a number of jobs. First was the dead heading of the bulbs left over from last week, next was some weeding and preparing a bed for the sunflowers. Then there was stone picking in preparation for the wildflower meadow, watering and composting to do. In fact we were so busy that there was no time for any photos to share with you! Next week will be even busier but more on that later.

Yesterday we were visited by the Eco Schools assessor to see if we had done enough to get a Green Flag award. The Action Team and representatives of the Eco Club met with the assessor as did many of the staff involved with our various Eco Projects. We won’t know the outcome until we get a letter from Eco Schools -but we think she was impressed

This Friday we hope to do a bit more planting in the allotment and finish deadheading the Daffodils after we got rained off last Friday. Next Tuesday there will be a chance to do some serious gardening after school. See Mr. Batchelor for details.

Today Greg Thurlow, countryside management expert came to our school to help us plant out our pond. The pond is an important part of the school grounds sustainable drainage system with swales feeding water to the pond, however it has been looking rather neglected for a while. Greg brought a pick up truck full of native species pond plants and taught us a little about what they all do. Hopefully once established they will help clean the water naturally as well as providing a great habitat for invertibrates and other creatures. 

We now look forward to seeing the pond grow and develop as a great new habitat in our school grounds. Thanks to all who joined in today and of course Greg.

Things have been so busy there has been little time to update this blog! Two weeks ago we went out to our new allotment and planted some seeds many of which are now sprouting. Last week we had a visit from our local MP Edward Garnier who came to formally present year 7 with their free OS maps and see our pupil voice activities, including the Eco Action Team. Thanks must go to Lily, Grace, Thomas and Charlie for their excellent presentation. Mr. Garnier said he would be keen to return in the future to see the progress we have made. On Tuesday The ASDAN award groups started their work on the allotment with one group building a raised herb bed and the other starting to dig in the manure to the beds. Tough work and oh I noticed they managed to tidy the shed as well!

It is now less than two weeks before we have our Eco Schools Green Flag inspection. We are all very excited and have begun to make preparations for the day.

We also have lots of new projects planned. The watering system for the allotment has now arrived and has been handed over to ICT as part of their studies into control systems. In year 9 a Design and Technology personalised learning module will design and build bird and bat boxes for the school grounds. We are also expecting the pond to be planted out any week now and have further plans to create our own wildflower meadow in the school grounds. In the Autmn we hope to create a small tree nursery working with the Earth Restoration Service but more on that later.

With the completion of the shed and greenhouse (thanks to some hardworking members of staff!) over the Easter break the allotment is almost ready for action. With the weather turning more and more Spring like (if you ignore the forecast for snow this weekend) the timing couldn’t be better. Eco Club will start back on Friday with a gardening special, so bring your wellies. More photos can be found on the Big Green Grow pages.

Today in Eco Club about fifteen of us went out to look at progress on the allotment. The edges of the beds are just being put in and next week will see topsoil being delivered and hard-standing and paths constructed. Having waited all this time its quite exciting seeing progress being made. We hope to have the allotment up and running soon after the Easter holidays.

We then went to dig up our hedgerow plants that came from the Woodland Trust two weeks ago. We had planted the plants in all together in their wrapper as we did not have time to plant them at first. Today we planted them as an 8 metre hedgerow along the edge of the pond. We look forward to the week after Easter when the pond itself is due to be planted out.

Our Bushloe Big Green Grow allotment project got under way today as construction on the fence began. Over the coming days we look forward to seeing the raised beds being constructed and the hard standing areas put in. You can check back here over the coming days for further updates and click on the Big Green Grow page to view the plan.

Today we prepared the sunflower seeds to be given out to year 6 on Monday. The Sunflower scheme is part of the Oadby and Wigston in Bloom scheme which promotes flowers throughout the area. Year 6 pupils are invited to plant the sunflowers in their front gardens. We will be running a competition for the tallest!

At Eco Club today 30 of us piled into room 3 to listen to Mr. Cox and Mr. Heighton tell us about how much energy we waste in our new school building. Mr. Heighton showed us an electricity meter that measures how much an appliance uses (see below). He plugged a computer in as a demonstration. We found out that even if a computer is switched off, if the plug is on at the mains it still pulls power. We worked out that if all the computers were left in this state then it costs the school nearly £10 a day (thats about £3500 a year). If the computers are left on but not used it costs £80 a day! Not only can we save a lot of money but also a lot of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) being released. Remember that CO2 is a “Greenhouse” gas that contributes to Global Warming.

We have decided to do something about it and most of the Eco Clubbers have volunteered to help turn appliances off at the end and during the day. Mr. Cox will also investigate whether the building management system can shut down power centrally. Our main aim is to cut the electricity use of the school as much as possible and this will start by monitoring our use more carefully.

6.00pm Wednesday 27th February to 6.00pm on the 28th February is Energy Saving Day when we are all being invited to take part in an experiment to cut down on our electricity use. Find out how we are doing on the energy saving day website. At the time of writing we were not doing so well and using 1% more energy than usual. Lets hope we can do better at school!

The Eco Action Team met again today. Among the many things on the agenda was the issue of Energy Saving which is a new addition to our Action Plan. This Friday Eco Club will be having a special meeting on this topic. Mr. Heighton has been measuring the amount of energy used by various things around the building and Mr. Cox will present some of the key issues.

Also joining us today was Penny from Leicestershire County Council. she told us about plans for a Waste Education Pack and the Action team were able to give her their opinions about how waste management should be taught.

We planted three more trees today in Eco Club, our school grounds will end up as Bushloe Forest if we keep this up! These trees were three Birch trees and they came from Brocks Hill Environment Park tree nursery. We are now looking forward to our free pack of Woodland Trust hedgerow plants due next week, they will go in alongside the pond (with a bit of help from Eco Club of course). We are now ready to apply for our first Green Flag award today. Following a meeting of the Eco Action Team we are sending our application in on Monday. This will mark the first staging post in a jouney that has taken two years so far. The Action Team will be meeting again next Wednesday when we will be joined by Penny from Leicestershire Council and Mrs. Gilroy representing the Governors. We will discuss waste management education with Penny as well as spending some time on the new Action Plan.

Ok, so no posts here for the past couple of weeks but that doesn’t mean nothing has been happening. In fact things have been really busy. In Eco Club we have been thinking about the sorts of species that we are trying to attract to our school grounds and writing “spotters guides” so we will know what we are looking at when we see it. Eco Club have also been very busy with the recycling and composting rotas.

Last week also saw an exciting new development as we planted another 6 trees, this time Oaks, at the back of the school (see above). Each Oak stands at over 2m tall and they have been generously donated to the school. In time these trees will provide shelter to our school as well as creating a diverse and rich habitat.

The same week also saw the fifth meeting of our Eco Action Team. It was a useful meeting at which the new Action Plan was discussed. Future plans include extending recycling and looking at energy use in our building. It was also decided to make our application for our first Eco Schools Green Flag Award, this will be discussed fully at our next (sixth) meeting.

It seems a good time to reflect on our progress so far. After a great start in 2006, last year was a quiet one for Eco Club as we settled into our new building. It was also frustrating for us all to see the destruction of the old Eco Area with the old building and then be able to do so little towards replacing it. We were able to plan though and since September we have made huge progress with more to come over the coming months. So far we have established a paper recycling system and have begun composting while outside we have planted bulbs, twelve trees and several shrubs. We have built birdfeeders and raised the profile of environmental issues across the school. Still to come is our allotment area which is due to be built next month and plans for the new pond to be cleaned out and planted with native species. We are also hoping for funds for nest boxes and to establish an area of wildflower meadowland. Inside the building Staff continue to introduce more plants to “green up” our school while work is being done on an ethical purchasing policy. It is all excellent progress but demands more effort than ever from us all to keep it going. A huge well done to all of you who have been involved in these schemes, we are already seeing the results!

The team working on the bird feeder finished their work today and here it is! At well over 2 metres high it should put off the cats, as for the squirrels we’ll have to see. It is now located in the year 6&7 playground. Well done to all involved, we look forward to see what visits.

This weekend is the RSPB Big Garden Watch, to mark this we have had our own bird watch in the grounds. Unfortunately workmen were out and it was lunchtime meaning that only a few bold crows, doves, pigeons and magpies were around. We used the RSPB’s counting sheet to help us. To encourage more birds into our grounds we have now put 4 coconut feeders up and construction was started of our new bird feeding station (to be finished next week). Why not have a go counting the birds in your garden this weekend or make your own birdfeeders? You can find a link to instructions here. The rest of you spent the time composting and put the full composting caddies into the new composting bins (set up by the kitchens for now). There is now a collection rota and new compost caddie collection site in the year 6/7 playground where you can put your apple cores etc.

No its not something out of doctor Who, today saw the arrival of the compost bins and compost caddies. We will now be able to start composting our lunchbox waste. Look out for the compost caddies to put your compostables into. Below is a picture of one we have in the staff room. There will also be a couple in the dining hall for those on packed lunches to use. More on this later.

Today was an important day for our environmental work here at Bushloe. This morning during pupil voice time the new Action Team met. This was only the fourth meeting of the action team but a great deal has been done. The team heard about the progress of Eco Club and added their thoughts to the way the last Action plan had been carried out. full minutes will be published here in due course.

 In Eco Club today at lunchtime we carried out our follow up eco survey of our buildings. This is the first survey we have done since 2006 and so the first of our new building. We still have a bit of finishing off to get the survey complete and then we will compare our findings with 2006 and the Action Team will be able to set the new Action Plan. Again we will publish our findings here as they are published.

The tree planting season will soon be over but there is still time left. This week we have had an offer of more free trees from the woodland trust. The trust offer all schools the choice of either hedgerow trees or young saplings plus a seedling pack. We have chosen the hedgerow, details here. Also Over Christmas five Oak saplings were generously given to be planted in the school grounds and will be rather special. Finally we have had a further offer today from Oadby and Wigston and the tree Wardens of some more trees. We had better get our spades ready! This Friday the focus of Eco Club will be the school energy survey. We need lots of volunteers to assess the energy efficiency of our new building.

The recycling “shed” is now up and running. Last Friday we collected 16 bulging sacks of recycled paper, in future we will be able to store it in the “shed” until collection. The success of this scheme is down to everyone putting their waste paper in the correct bin and then the dedicated team of volunteers collecting it. Well done to all involved, we will now look into futher ways to extend this scheme later this term.

There was no Eco Club meeting last week as it was Christmas Dinner. In fact some of you got to reflect on this in Geography when we looked at how far our Christmas Dinners had travelled in “food miles” (up to around 37000 miles!). Obviously we have not had a meeting today as it is the holiday but since I know some of you like to keep track of what is going on we should have an update.

First of all a huge thank you to all who have contributed garden tools to our allotment project the “Bushloe Big Green Grow” that starts in the spring. We now have nearly enough tools to get the project started, especially since this week we had two further donations including some smaller hand tools which are going to prove invaluable. Sorry if there are any donations I have yet to acknowledge, I will get around to it in the new year.

Recycling is due to step up a gear in the new year. After Christmas all pupils and staff will be invited to bring in their old Christmas cards to recycle. We also hope to start our new rota for recycled paper collection  (now up on the Eco Club notice board). We also have a new storage facility that will be outside where the recycled paper will be stored until collection. This “shed ” will also be the place where we can keep other items for recycling and will allow us to expand the range of things we recycle as a school. Oh and by the way the “shed” is made of 70% recycled plastic! Also coming in the spring will be a new cardboard recycling “skip” which will replace one of the “rubbish” (landfill) skips.

When we start back in the new year we will carry on with our programme of Eco Club meetings on Fridays. Planned sessions include making bird feeders (yes I know -we will get around to that one eventually) and starting to look at how much energy we use around the building. Have a happy Christmas and see you in the New Year.

Fridays session was all about composting. We are planning to compost as much of the material from the veg patch and “waste” from lunch boxes as possible. Penny from Leicestershire Council came in to talk to us about composting and what we need to do to do it well. For those of you who missed her presentation Penny has allowed us to publish it above, so have a look through. She also told us that we can get 3 composting bins for the school to get our composting started! Watch out for the composting caddies to put all you lunchbox compostables into!