Eco Schools in ELWA

Eco Schools in Newham, Havering, Redbridge and Barking and Dagenham

In August 2011 the percentage of schools in each borough taking part in Eco Schools was:

Newham: 47.32%
Redbridge: 46.46%
Havering: 45.54%
Barking and Dagenham: 40%

There are only 3 schools out of 377 schools in all four boroughs that have been awarded the Eco-Schools Green Flag award! These are:

St Luke’s CofE VA Primary School (Newham) registered on the eco- schools website in 2006, achieved their first Green Flag award in 2009 and their second in 2011.

New City Primary School (Newham) registered in 2009 and achieved their first Green Flag in 2010.

Whybridge Infant School (Havering) They registered in 2006, achieved their first green flag in 2007 and their second green flag in 2010.

Join Eco Schools

Joining the Eco Schools programme is free and it makes tackling sustainable issues manageable and easy for all schools, whether they are children’s centres, nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools or schools with special status.

The Eco Schools Programme is focused around nine key environmental topics. These are:

• Water
• Biodiversity
• Energy
• Global Perspectives
• Healthy Living
• Litter
• School Grounds
• Transport
• Waste

The Recycle for Your Community Education programme focuses on the Waste topic, but also incorporates information from other topics such as litter, healthy living, global perspectives and energy.

How to register

Registering the school is the first step. This can be done online:
http://www.eco-schools.org.uk/members/register.aspx
Once registered, schools follow a simple seven-step process which helps them to address a variety of environmental themes, ranging from litter and waste to healthy living and biodiversity.

Children are the driving force behind Eco-Schools – they lead the eco-committee and help carry out an audit to assess the environmental performance of their school. Through consultation with the rest of the school and the wider community it is the pupils that decide which environmental themes they want to address and how they are going to do it.

There are three awards: Bronze, Silver and Green Flag. The Bronze and Silver awards can be applied for online but the Green Flag will be externally assessed. All criteria for all awards can also be found on the website.

Find out more at http://www.eco-schools.org.uk/about/

To find out how our Education Officer can help your school to work towards Eco-School awards, contact Julia Roebuck on 078 9181 5068 or at julia.roebuck@wastewatch.org.uk