We are thrilled to announce that St Ives has been awarded a Green Flag.  The Eco-Schools Green Flag is an internationally recognised award for excellence in environmental action and learning. 

In September 2019, we made a commitment as a community to earn this award before the end of the academic year.  We started by doing a full environmental review of the school, with everyone having an input on what we thought we were doing well and where we thought we needed to improve. 

Next, we formed an Eco-Committee, made up of Eco Monitors who were selected by the pupils.   The Eco-Committee then analysed the Environmental review and used it to build a school Action Plan.   The goals and achievements of the Action Plan were as follows:

• Every pupil made a ‘green’ pledge where they made a commitment to be more environmentally friendly in their behaviours
• Each of these pledges were written out and stuck onto our ‘pledge’ tree which was on display in the main school corridor to remind us daily of our environmental responsibilities
• Eco Monitors set our priorities as saving water, saving electricity and reducing food waste
• We reduced water usage by switching from baths to showers of no longer than 3 minutes and encouraged our families to do the same
• For Energy – pupils worked with our Business Manager to install energy monitors into all classrooms, which they then monitored to ensure less usage.  One of the Eco Monitors was responsible for turning off lights every time they left a classroom.
• We held a ‘Switch Off’ event, as part of Earth Hour Day, where pupils used no energy at home for a Saturday evening
• Food wastage – we weighed our food wastage and then educated all pupils in only taking the food they wanted for lunch, encouraging everyone to start with less and have seconds if they needed it, rather than load up their plates.  This resulted in reducing our food waste by 75%!
• We worked with the organisation One Tree Planted, asking pupils to come to school wearing green and donating £1.  Our donations allowed One Tree Planted to plant 100 trees
• Pupils learnt to made Eco-bricks, filling them with non-recyclable plastic.
• We held a Green Halloween Costume Swap where pupils swapped costumes rather than bought new ones for Halloween
• At Christmas, we made tree decorations using natural materials.  Year 3 organised a Christmas jumper swap.  We sent out an E-card, rather than a paper card and pupils made paper chains using recycled paper with each link having an eco-wish on it.
• We held 3 Eco Festivals throughout the year:

1. Reduce, recycle, reuse
2. Product Lifecycles & Energy
3. Upcycling

• Worked with Haslemere’s Love Haslemere, Hate Waste initiative.