March Newsletter
Hello and welcome to the Eco-Schools March Newsletter, featuring: the Great Big School Clean 2022, Exploring Urban Nature with the Natural History Museum, recycling clothing with Rag Bag, a live litter lesson from Eco-Schools Scotland and more!
The Great Big School Clean 25th March – 10th April 2022!
The Great Big School Clean is back! We know that no one is too small to make a big difference, so we are asking all Eco-Schools to protect wildlife and improve their local community by pledging to pick as part of the #GBSchoolClean. When you pledge you will be invited to join author and eco-journalist Sarah Roberts for a reading of her fantastic new book Somebody Crunched Colin on Friday 25th March. You will also be entered into a draw to win prizes ranging from book-filled goody bags, to a specialist talk on environmental issues from Sarah herself!
Click the link below to let us know how many young people will participate and how many bags of litter your school will pledge to pick for the #GBSchoolClean 2022!
Explore: Urban Nature with the Natural History Museum
Eco-Schools are proud to announce that we are working with the fantastic Natural History Museum! The Natural History Museum are challenging students across the UK to help everyone better understand and support nature on our doorsteps, especially in our towns and cities! Alongside the Natural History Museum, Eco-Schools want to help thousands of young people dig into what urban nature is – what does it do? How is it changing? And how can we support it?
Click the link below to read more about this exciting new project that encourages young people to think scientifically about Urban Nature, whilst providing them with the chance to have their unique questions turned into a big research project that people across the whole of the UK will help complete.
Eco-Schools Scotland Live Lesson: Litter & Waste
To celebrate the Great Big School Clean 2022, Eco-Schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been invited to join the Eco-Schools team in Scotland for a live lesson on litter and waste featuring some very special guests! The lesson will contain three morning workshops streamed live on Teams on the 21st of March, with a follow up on the 25th March. To find further details and register your class, click below!
Rag Bag – Raising Money & Saving the Planet!
Would you like to raise funds for your school AND work to save the environment, all at the same time?! Our friends Rag Bag have an amazing recycling service that schools and nurseries can get involved with for FREE.
You can raise up to £400 per tonne of recycled clothing and Rag Bag will provide all materials and pick up your donations too. You can also use this as evidence towards your Eco-Schools Green Flag.
2 Months Until Application Window Opens
There are now only 55 days left until the Eco-Schools Green Flag Application window for 2021-2022 opens and our team can’t wait to begin rewarding young people’s environmental efforts with an Eco-Schools Green Flag!
You still have plenty of time to login to your Eco-Schools account and begin answering questions before then, to ensure you are ready to apply! All answers are autosaved as you go and questions can be completed in any order – helping all of our wonderful Eco-Coordinators save time during those busy Summer Term months!
Eco-Fact Step 6: Monitoring and Evaluation
The average School working on our Litter topic has litter-picked around 20 bags of rubbish so far this academic year, with one school collecting an amazing 150 bags of litter from their local community! Can you beat the national average, or become the school who collects the most bags of litter this academic year? Login to the Eco-Schools portal and let us know by completing the Step 6: Monitoring and Evaluation Litter questions!
Please Note: If you haven’t worked on the Litter topic this year, but have continued to complete litter-picks simply because you’re awesome, you can tick ‘Litter’ alongside your chosen three topics and still record & submit your data!
Eco-Example: Canon Burrow’s Reducing Plastic
We love sharing the fantastic work of Eco-Committees across the country, this month we have an example from our longest standing Green Flag Eco-School Canon Burrows. Canon Burrows managed to cut their single-use plastic use in half, meaning they are now sending tens of thousands less pieces of plastic to landfill each year! You can read more about their project on the Marine page of the Eco-Schools website, or by clicking below. We especially like how they used sample data to highlight the colossal impact of their work!
