Promoting Eco-Schools In Your Local Neighbourhood

I joined the Better Century community about a month ago – I first came across them in a job advert! I really like Better Century’s mission of being ‘the go-to knowledge based for anyone who wants to live more sustainably’. Over the last two years, I’ve been making little changes to my lifestyle including using soap bars, refilling cleaning bottles, cycling to work, getting milk in glass bottles – and this community is enabling me to see what else I could be doing, and providing a supportive environment where I can swap and discuss ideas.

After submitting the names of a few organisations which I feel share this communities ambition, I was invited to become a Research Associate. In this group, we review the suggestions from the wider community, and if we feel they are a good fit to become a partner, we add them to our proposed partner list.

One of these organisations is Eco-Schools, which is part of Keep Britain Tidy (https://www.eco-schools.org.uk/). It is a pupil led programme which provides a way for schools and their local community to improve the environment, by looking across the 10 topics of biodiversity, energy, global citizenship, healthy living, litter, marine, schools grounds, transport, waste and water. The school works towards Bronze, Silver and Gold awards, and are assessed at each stage. I am a total fan of this programme - as governor of a local primary school I am working with my school to become an Eco-School, and I am also training to be an Eco-Schools Assessor.

18k schools are already registered Eco-Schools in England, and I think there are about 32k schools across the UK - so why don’t you contact your local school and help them to become an Eco-School. Wouldn’t it be great, if this community helped to get more schools involved in this excellent programme?

Wow this sounds great - I will contact my local school tomorrow…thank you for sharing :slight_smile:

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A mini update from me. I am now officially an Eco-Schools Assessor!

I attended my training a couple of weeks ago and have just received the email to say I am now an Assessor. I have already provisionally booked in a Green Flag Assessment at a local school for a couple of weeks’ time. I must admit that I am pretty excited.

Also, I have been helping my local school with the Eco-Schools Programme – we now have an Eco Committee, have had a couple of meetings to kick things off and the children are in the middle of doing their Environmental Review. What is lovely to see is their excitement about making changes – and their annoyance when they see litter in the playground or the lights left on by the teachers!

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