West Ewell Primary School became a Green Flag Eco-School in January 2021. One of their areas of focus was litter, both within their school grounds and also outside in their wider school community. Now West Ewell host regular litter-picks, during the school day litter-picks are completed within the School Grounds and these litter-picks expand into the area surrounding the school at weekends and also involve (Step 5) pupil’s families. Whilst spotting litter isn’t always easy, during the last weekend litter-pick pupils at West Ewell managed to collect eleven full bin bags of litter from bushes and hedgerows in just 90 minutes!

To celebrate 21 years of being an Eco-School, Gorse Hall Primary School decided to participate in Keep Britain Tidy and Eco-Schools Great Big School Clean (which is an annual event that happens each spring). Despite the school grounds looking beautiful and immaculate, it didn’t take long for the Year 5 pupils and the school’s Eco-Committee to fill a whole refuse sack with litter. Most of the litter found was based around the school perimeter, having blown in from outside the school grounds and single-use plastics made up the vast majority of the litter collected. This is a particular problem as plastic harms wildlife and pupils at Gorse Hall had recently discovered a pair of voles and nesting blue tits in the pond area of their school grounds. Not only was the litter pick fun, it also made students at Gorse Hall realise the damage dropping litter can do to our environment!

Last year, the Eco-Committee at St Alban’s decided to invest in 8 litter pickers for their school and since then they have cleaned up their school grounds at least twice a week during morning play times. Once a week, they also try to get out into their community to litter pick during lunch break. The group of children litter picking each week has to change, because so many of the children at St Alban’s want to get involved! School Litter Monitors help their Eco-Coordinator organise the litter picks and the Committee have also contacted their local Council who sent a representative to their school to talk to everyone about waste and looking after their environment. They also share their litter picking achievements on social media with local group Keep Blackburn Tidy – a great examples of Step 5: Informing and Involving!
For Keep Britain Tidy’s Great Big School Clean, the whole school (from Nursery to Year 6) litter picked both inside and outside the School grounds: loaning additional litter picking equipment from Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. Key Stage 2 collected 25 bags of litter, a tyre, a television, a shopping trolley, a chair, a fire extinguisher and a bike from outside the school grounds and EYFS and KS1 collected 7 bags of litter from inside school grounds. A few days later, they held another litter pick and invited Keep Britain Tidy #LitterHero Wayne Dixon and his dog Koda.
Since beginning their work on the Eco-Schools Litter topic, pupils have had fun and noticed how much difference their litter picking has made to the local area. The school have also had plenty of local residents calling to say thank you!

The Eco-Team at Emscote Infant school decided it was their duty to lead from the front. They put their vests on, picked up their pickers and went for a walk in their local conservation area collecting all of the rubbish they found. When they got back to school they sorted the rubbish, recycling what they could and discarding the rest. Finally, they shouted out about their work in their school newsletter (setting a brilliant example to all their classmates and working on Eco-Schools Step 5: Informing and Involving). Great work!

One of the areas of focus for Swanshurst’s Eco-Ambassadors this year was litter within their school grounds. Even though they don’t have a huge litter problem on site, unfortunately a lot of the litter around the perimeter of the school had blown in from outside. They purchased litter pickers, dedicated some time during weekly meetings to collecting litter, and signed up to the Keep Britain Tidy Great Big School Clean. During a week of action for the Great Big School Clean, there were daily litter-picks during lunchtime and after school and a total 5 bin bags of litter were collected (including some from relatively hidden areas of the school site). Alongside their direct action, the Eco-Ambassadors also ran a poster competition to highlight the importance of putting litter in the bin. Finally, they wrote up their work and achievements in their termly school newsletter to help fulfil Step 5 of the Eco Schools criteria: Informing and Involving.

Birchwood Community High’s Eco-Committee took part in Keep Britain Tidy’s The Great Big School Clean. The Committee organised a day of activities that focused on the impact of litter on the environment. For Eco-Schools Step 5: Informing and Involving they invited year 4 students from a local primary school to join them. The first half of the day was spent litter-picking in and around the school site: 32 people were involved (a mixture of Committee members, primary school pupils and volunteers). In total 100kg of litter was collected including 358 crisp packets, some of which were 11 years old! In the second half of the day, they learnt about how litter can impact our oceans and how long it takes for different types of litter to biodegrade. In further, whole-school citizenship lessons pupils also learnt about the impact of litter on the ocean and how to solve the litter problem by following the 5R’s!