Catherine Wayte Primary School Going For Green!

A Swindon Schools’ Story….

At Catherine Wayte Primary School in Swindon we are working towards making our school more Eco-Friendly. Over the last couple of years we have received Eco-Schools status by achieving the Bronze and Silver Awards and are now working hard to achieve the Green Flag Award.

Eco Teams and Eco Warriors
As part of our Eco Team, we have a group of children called ‘Eco-Warriors’ who ensure that lights and taps are switched off when not in use. They also make sure that their class is re-using scrap paper and then putting it into the bin when it is no longer useable. The Eco-Warriors regularly shred paper to put in the compost bins to keep them balanced with the fruit peel. In November 2008, we set up a wormery in our wildlife area. The worms eat more of a range of food than we can put in the compost bins so the Eco-Warriors fill this up too.

The adults in the team also help to look after the worms and the compost bins. We have regular meetings to discuss new initiatives and ideas. Our team consists of one teacher, one governor and two teaching assistants.

Summer Fetes have been a huge success for the Eco Team. for example, we have had both adults and children working together to make a recycled toys stall. In the past we have also asked the Eco Team to collect any old, unwanted toys in good condition from friends, family and neighbours. We then sold these at the school fete to raise money for our Eco project.

The School Roof
Our ongoing large-scale Eco project is to put photovoltaeic cells on the roof of the school. This will provide an alternative energy source for the school and we will be on the way to making our school self-sufficient. All of our fundraising is going towards making this dream a reality.

On the Land
Children within the school recently collected the Morrison’s Let’s Grow vouchers and we have been able to order a range of growing equipment for the school, to plant seedlings. We also have have a weather watch instrument which will be put into the wildlife area to monitor weather throughout the year.

Recycling
Last Summer we held a campaign within the school to recycle old, unwanted mobile phones. Any money raised will go towards our large scale project to put solar panels on the school roof.

Links
Catherine Wayte Primary School

Gug Says
A big thank you to Beth for telling us about this – we’ll be asking Beth if she can let us have updates on how the Eco Team is getting on; and we’ll try and post some pictures on the gug site in the future to show what’s happening at the school.

Beth Watts - 19/01/10