January Newsletter
Happy New Year Eco-Coordinators,
Welcome to the first Eco-Schools newsletter of 2025! As we step into the new year, climate-related events in America are making headlines globally. This underscores the importance of your incredible work educating young people about environmental issues and empowering them to act. Your efforts are more crucial than ever. Our team is here to support you to create positive impacts throughout 2025. Let’s act now!
Example Action Plan
It’s during the Spring and Summer Terms, when Eco-Committees usually dive head first into their Action Plans; there’s still plenty of time to achieve your environmental goals this academic year! We’ve received many enquiries about what a Green Flag Action Plan looks like, so we’ve created an example just for you. Click the link above, to check it out!
50 Eco-Projects
A couple of the project ideas in our example Action Plan come directly from our 50 Eco-Projects Resource. You can access this resource by logging into your Eco-Schools account, starting an application, and clicking on the resources section of Step 3: Action Plan. If you haven’t created an Action Plan yet this academic year, this is the perfect place to start. Each project is graded by cost and ease of delivery and includes links to resources that will help you plan and deliver the project.
Great Big School Clean
Save the date for the Great Big School Clean! Running from 21st March to 6th April. You will soon be able to pledge to pick and join our nation’s biggest mass-action environmental campaign. This year, every school, college, and nursery that pledges will receive updated litter-related resources, including a new assembly that dives deeper into the harmful effects of litter. We’ll continue sharing updates and links in future newsletters and you can pledge your support from February!
Count Your Carbon
Our free, comprehensive school/nursery carbon calculator has been updated! Based on your feedback, we’ve revised one of our transport questions and created a simple tool to help you gather data for it. More than 700 settings have already completed a calculation, and we’re eager to reach 1,000 as soon as possible. This will allow us to dive deeper into the data and provide insights into how your school or nursery’s carbon footprint compares to others.
Cut Your Carbon Wrapped
We’re wrapping up the 2024 Cut Your Carbon campaign and are delighted to announce the two winning schools that will receive a mural: Coalway Junior School and Fox Wood School. We can’t wait to see the finished results! If you haven’t submitted your results yet, please do so via the link above by midnight on Monday (20th January). Your feedback will help us develop the campaign to make it bigger, better, and even more impactful for 2025!
Eco-Schools Training
Throughout the Spring Term, we will be delivering Session 2 of our Eco-Schools Training Sessions. This session covers steps 4-7 of the Eco-Schools framework and is relevant to everyone, whether you attended Session 1 or not. Thanks to the Bupa Foundation, this training is also free for all educators in England. Click the link below to check dates and register!
What Else is Happening?
- Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel is happening from 24 March to 4 April 2025. Register before 17th February to be entered into their early bird prize draw for a chance to win a bespoke cycle storage solution worth up to £30,000 for your school. The Big Walk and Wheel inspires pupils to make active journeys to school, improve air quality in their neighbourhood, and discover how these changes benefit their world. Click here to find out more.
- TastEd offers sensory food education that aligns with the National Food Strategy recommendations. Through their resources and lesson plans, children get to experience the joy of fresh vegetables and fruits. Their program is definitely more carrot, less stick! Best of all, their work is fully funded, register here and access all their amazing resources for free!
- VotesforSchools is an organisation passionate about ensuring children and young people are informed, curious, and heard. They recently asked young people, “Should we learn more about coping with extreme weather?” With over 56,000 young people voting, you can discover the outcome of the vote and some of their insights by clicking here!
- Grown Out of It is an independent platform for buying and selling second-hand school uniforms. Registering and listing your items is free, and by promoting pre-loved clothing, you can reduce your setting’s carbon footprint and help prevent uniforms from ending up in landfills. Find out more here.
- Perennial Eco-Schools favourite, RSPB’s Big School Birdwatch, is happening this month! You can join this colossal survey now and you have until the 14th February to complete it. With birds facing so many challenges, it’s more important than ever to get involved in this year’s Birdwatch. Find more information, register, and download their free resources via this link.
- The Royal Meteorological Society is looking for schools to participate in this year’s Climate Literacy Survey. If you are in a school that teaches year 11, please take part in the survey and share the request with your networks. Data will be collected until the end of March 2025. The survey and further information can be accessed here.
- Be the Future offers interactive sustainability experiences for primary school students. They’ve provided us with the discount code KBT50, so all schools within our network can visit Be The Future IMMERS(ED) Together in Huddersfield for half price. Learn more about this unforgettable experience here, or click this link to book – and don’t forget to use the code KBT50 for your discount.
- Energy Savers Week 2025 kicks off on January 20th! Although this campaign isn’t specifically targeted at schools, Twinkl has created accompanying resources, and it’s a fantastic opportunity to extend your Eco-Schools initiatives into students’ homes. This link provides more details, including five simple tips to help families stay warm while reducing their energy use. Consider featuring these tips in your upcoming newsletter to engage families in energy-saving practices at home.
- Children’s Mental Health Week 2025 will take place from 3-9 February 2025. The theme this year is Know Yourself, Grow Yourself and their wonderful Inside Out 2 resources, including assemblies and top tips, are available to download for free.
