Warwick School awarded its first Green Flag

Warwick School has been awarded its first Green Flag.

The Green Team at Warwick School have finally achieved the award they have been working towards for four years.

In March an assessor from Eco-Schools England came to assess the school’s engagement in environmental issues and environmental performance.

In a collaborative bid, Warwick School and Warwick Junior School, succeeded in achieving their first Green Flag Award.

Here's what the 'Green Team' did

The year started with reviewing the environmental performance of the school and creating a new annual environmental action plan.

The 'eco-slogan' for the year was, ‘Don’t be Mean, Go Green!’ and soon started to appear on noticeboards around the campus and was heard from the lips of pupils around the school.

Sixth Formers, Freddie Keays and Dan Harding, led the first project of the year, ’Recycle Right Fortnight’, aimed at boosting recycling around the school.

A review of products used in packed lunches was conducted and the catering team agreed to switch from plastic bottles of water to cardboard cartons.

The team visited every tutor group to show all boys (and staff) how to correctly use the recycling bins.

Then the Green Team focused on cutting energy consumption.

Louis Hadley and Will Kendell led ‘Switch-Off Fortnight’, running a competition to monitor how often forms left their lights on when their form rooms were unoccupied.

The Team’s attention then moved to the environmental impacts of meat consumption, and took on creating of a regular meat-free day in the dining room menu.

Plans for the fifth annual ‘Ditch the Car Day’ at the end of the Easter term, was unfortunately stopped by Covid-19 along with other projects planned for the summer term.

However, the school team says that in many ways the environmental benefits of the lockdown have been one of the few positives to have emerged from the pandemic.

The shutdown of the school site forced everyone to work from home, cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions created by journeys to and from school.

The switch to online learning and internal examinations cut paper usage by 99 per cent - an estimated 25,000 pieces of paper alone.

These changes have partly reversed with the return of school this new academic year, but the hope is that some of these changes will remain.