ECO EXCELLENCE

Each year, students in the Sir Jonathan North Eco Club complete an audit of the college and choose three categories to work on. Last year, they selected school grounds, water, and healthy living, organising projects in each category.

For the school grounds, students worked with the Leicester City Eco-Schools team on the WWF Wildlife Friendly School project. Alongside staff from the council, they performed an audit of the school and improved the surrounding areas to make them more appealing to wildlife. They added nest boxes, bat boxes, and enhanced the college pond to make it more hedgehog-friendly. Students also enjoyed attending a community hedgehog event at Lancaster School, where they were able to showcase their work. The council also selected us to be a hedgehog champion, and one of our students, Martha, won the WWF’s Design a Badge competition.

For the water category, we collected copious amounts of plastic water bottles and transformed them into miniature flowers, which were then displayed at the Lionheart Educational Trust Eco Rally last June.

Finally, for healthy eating, continued work was done on our new orchard, which was started the previous year. We also took part in the Leicester Eco-Schools ‘Mealbarrow’ competition, which tasked schools with designing a healthy menu and then growing some of the ingredients—including herbs and spices—in a wheelbarrow (the clue’s in the name, really!).

Our mealbarrow was then judged, alongside other entries, at Abbey Pumping Station. Our school menu won, and our mealbarrow finished third—a fantastic achievement.

Mrs White, who oversees the Eco Club, then collated evidence of all the projects and added this to the Green Flag application. This was sent off to Eco-Schools, who reviewed the evidence and decided whether or not a school is worthy of the Green Flag.

Fresh from securing a hat-trick of Green Flags, our Eco Club is busy planning this year’s exploits, with ambitions to continue work on the orchard and improve the school grounds.

“My favourite part of Eco Club last year was our litter pick and planting event,” commented one student. “It felt so rewarding to first clean up our local area and then help nature by planting new life. Seeing the flowers grow inspired me to do more of this.”