Meeting - 11.12.2007

People who attended the meeting: Ambar Butt, Chloe Sutcliffe, Harsimrat Sadana, James Garfoor, Joshua Freeman, Matthew Frost, Nyomi Bates, Sam Winterbottom, Timesh Karsan, Tehreem Khan and Mrs Vickerman



Today we worked in our action groups (slightly amened from the meeting 7.11.2007):



Harsimrat & Tehreem - Awareness Day

They book booked assemblies for Term 3 with Year 7 & 8. This is to let the students know what the Eco Council is doing and ask for their support and ideas. They both managed to get both Heads of Year to agree to the follow up PDS session to be used letting the students put their ideas on the Blog.

Following this they spoke to Mrs Robinson to find a suitable date in February to help a school awareness day. The idea so far is that we will invite in organisations such as Friends of the Earth, The Carbon Trust, etc to have stalls in the mall. The Eco Council will also have a stall too.



Chloe - Reducing Paper

Chloe spoke to Mrs Bullivant to see if it would be possible to send a letter out to parents asking if they would be prepared to opt out of having paper sent home and to replace this with an email. More to follow on this.

Josh & Timesh - Printers
Emailed Mr Freeburn to set up a meeting to find out how many printers we have in School; how many we could add a 'bolt onto' which would alllow us to be able to print double sided and also how much they would cost. They have arranged a meeting with him on Wed 12th.

Sam & James - Display
Made a start on printing material to put on the display board. They designed their layout and will speak to Mrs Moore to get the materails they need.

Nyomi, Chloe & Matthew - Curriculum Survey
Made a start on speaking to Heads of Department to establish what 'Green issues' are covered on their curruiculum areas. They have created a table to document their finding in.

This is where the time ran out.

Meeting - 4.12.2007

The Following people were at the meeting: Anjali Malhortra, Aysha Rafiq, Chloe Sutcliffe, Harsimrat Sadana, Najda Khan, Nyomi Bates, Sam Winterbottom, Mrs Vickerman & Mrs Barrett (Dixons CA Governor).

At this meeting the message hadn't got to everyone to attend, so we were unable to have a full update from everyone from the previous week.

• Najda welcomed Mrs Barrett to the meeting and thanked her for giving up her time.


• Harsimrat had spent several hours the previous week going round school conducting a survey on what rooms had been left with the lights; computers; air cons and projectors on when empty. She had emailed this to everyone - the results were quite shocking, some areas in school were really bad! She will do this again to get more information.


• Sam had spoken to Bradford Council who had confirmed that funds were available to groups such as these, but we would have to have a meeting and talk about what we wanted to spend the money on and create a proposal explaining how the money will be spent.


• Mrs Barrett gave us some advice on what things we could focus on. she recommended that we could survey each curriculum area and see what they currently do in school relating to Green Matters. We could then look to try and add more into the curriculum.


• Nyomi suggested that we could introduce fact cards - these could be placed around school or gievn out in an assembly. She also said that in a display we could look at the wider picture and then zoom in on how it effects us at Dixons.

Meeting - 20.11.2007

The following people cam along to the meeting: Ambar Butt, Anjali Malhortra, Ashley Mann, Aysha Rafiq, Chloe Sutcliffe, Harsimrat Sadana, Hemash Mahmood, James Garfoor, Joshua Freeman, Matthew Frost, Najda Khan, Nyomi Bates
Oliver Shaw, Sam Winterbottom, Timesh Karsan, Nafisa Rehman, Tehreem Khan, Mrs Vickerman.

We decided that it was time for action, so we set up mini action groups:
Awareness Group
Josh, Matthew & Hemash
Focus – creating a presentation / movie maker film to use in assemblies to promote some of the ideas that the council are championing. To look to create a blog that can be used to collect and share ideas/suggestions.
Eco Board Group
Oliver, Aysha and Anjali
Focus – Design a logo and present information on the notice board provided. Design a poster to be put up over next to the printers in school to reinforce the message to ‘think before you print’.
Survey Group
Harsimrat and Sam
Focus – design, plan and implement a survey of school to find out how many rooms are left with lights, air conditioning and pc’s on after hours.
Funding / Competition Group
Timesh and James
Focus – look into what funding is available to the school – (local council, lottery, FOD, etc) also to look into some of the competition listed on the eco schools website.
Coursework & Printing Group
Nyomi and Chloe
Focus – conduct some research to see how much printing is necessary for each year group. Look at how work is marked in IT using Moodle. Look at options to print coursework on recycled paper. See if parents/guardians can receive lets/newsletters via email or email+links to the website.
Green Days Group
Ambar, Nafisa and Tehreem
Focus – think about what days could be run in school to help raise awareness and promote the issues.
Paper free day
Use public transport day
Eco Fair – encourage other schools / business to share good practice
Enterprise days could take a green approach

Eco Schools Initiative
Najda
Focus - make sure that we are looking at the criteria each week and ticking off what we have done.

At this point everyone went off into their groups to discuss things further.

Second Meeting 13.11.2007

For this meeting the following people cam along: Ambar Butt, Anjali Malhortra, Ashley Mann, Aysha Rafiq, Chloe Sutcliffe, Harsimrat Sadana, Hemash Mahmood, James Garfoor, Joshua Freeman, Matthew Frost, Najda Khan, Nyomi BatesOliver Shaw, Sam Winterbottom, Timesh Karsan, Nafisa Rehman, Mrs Vickerman & Mrs Moore.

Following on from the ideas that were discussed at the last meeting we tried to prioritise them but we found it hard to agree. Concerns were highlighted over getting the buy in of all students. Josh raised the point that to ensure students showed interest and were keen to get involved then they would want some sort of reward for their efforts. Others students agreed with this and the students discussed what they could offer:
Ø A trip for the form who reduced their total print amounts
Ø Prize for the form who brought in items to be recycled
Ø If the school met its target there could be a rewards day or a day off school
These ideas were discussed, but it was decided to move on and come back to these at a later stage.

Najda asked students how they would like to move these ideas forward. Some students volunteered to take some of the ideas forward:
Action - Harsimrat volunteered to look in to conducting a survey in school, focusing on how many lights, air conditioning units, pc’s, etc. are left on in rooms after school.
Action - Oliver, Aysha and Anjali volunteered to start promoting the group via the notice board in the entrance.
Action - Sam volunteered to enter the Climate Champions competition to try and wins some funds and get onto the Climate Champions team for the UK.Action - Mrs Moore was asked to look into the costs of introducing recycled paper for the printers.

We ran out of time at this point.

First Meeting - 6.11.2007

At the first meeting the following people came along:
Ambar Butt, Anjali Malhortra, Ashley Mann, Aysha Rafiq, Chloe Sutcliffe, Harsimrat Sadana, Hemash Mahmood, James Garfoor, Joshua Freeman, Matthew Frost, Najda Khan, Nyomi Bates
Oliver Shaw, Sam Winterbottom, Timesh Karsan, Ummar Zubair, Mr Sage, Mrs Vickerman & Mrs Moore.

Everyone went round the table and said why they would like to get involved with the Eco Council. Mrs Vickerman talked about the Eco Schools Initiative and everyone agreed that this is something they thought we should go for in School.

We then decided to brainstorm all the areas in school we thought could be improved:

Coursework
o Marking more work online, especially draft work
o Only having to reprint pages that need amended when receiving feedback on coursework, rather than the whole document
o Printing draft work on recycled paper or uploading it to Moodle

Printing
o Using the printers to print double sided
o Having so many printers that use only recycled paper – this could be for draft work or all work
o All letters going home should be printed on both sides
o Parents could opt in for letters / newsletter sent by email rather than a hard copy

Energy Usage
o Policy for lights/monitors/air con etc off at the end of the day
o Purchase software that would automatically turn off the computers at a certain time
o Using motion detectors light switches – especially for areas that are not in constant use e.g. toilets
o Use energy saving light bulbs
o Use water saving taps
o Monitor the electricity usage each month and set targets to reduce it short term, mid and long etc
o Consider using solar panels / turbines to generate own energy
o Switch energy provider to a more greener one e.g. Eon
o Dimmer switches

Awareness
o Use media to promote what we are doing in school, local newspaper / tv
o Use incentives to promote the causes and raise awareness and get commitment from staff, students and parents
o Introduce special Green days in school
- Paper free day
- Use public transport day
- Eco Fair – encourage other schools / business to share good practice
- Enterprise days could take a green approach
o Apply for free energy saving light bulbs / water hippos to send home to encourage parents to be more eco friendly/aware
o Develop a section on the Intranet with information, facts, tips and advice on green issues and what we are doing in school

Recycling
o Introduce special bins for plastics bottles; cans; newspaper; materials from the canteen; etc
o Use compost bins for waste from the kitchen
o Look for ways to re-use waste paper within DCA
o At the end of year students could recycle their revision guides for the year below

Reduce Waste
o Use Sims when taking the register, it could record who is having a school lunch, the canteen could plan more effectively to help reduce waste food
o Use Sims to communicate information rather than notes in the form boxes to help save paper

Other
o Introduce a school bus service for areas with the most students in
o Develop a garden and / or green house – could produce food, improve immediate environment, more nature friendly
o Get the college shop to stock recycle / environment friendly stationery
o See where the canteen gets its food from; could we use more local suppliers?

At this point we ran out of time.

Eco Council Diary - what have we done so far...

Read here what the Eco council have been up to on your behalf.

Suggestions and Ideas

Please post all of your suggestion and ideas for helping to make the school a more enviromentally responsible place.

Suggestion

hello my name is Vicky and i have some suggestions to make our school a greener place. my first suggestion is to have 3 types of bins around our school the first sort of bin we need is a waste paper bin the second a glass and can bin and the third a bin for nonrecyclable rubbish. another of one of my suggestions is that in some lessons the teacher gives out to many non inportant peices of paper for paper that is not inportant the information from it should be put onto the board and for only the most inportand information to be on paper or even ot be coppied down from the board if is short.thank-you vicky 8B

Eco Council

Hi

Welcome to the Eco Council Blog.

Please add any suggestions or comments relating to how we can improve our Eco Credentials within the school and local community.

many thanks Mrs Vickerman