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.