Caring for our Environment

We in Scoil Íosa first registered with the Green Schools Project in 2002 and received our first Green Flag two years later.

This September we decided that we would apply to An Taisce for the renewal of our Green Flag. Almost without us realising it the whole Green School project had become part of everyday school life in Scoil Íosa so from that basis we set about looking into the whole area of energy.

We have worked hard, both in the area of litter and waste management, which gained us our first Green Flag, and more recently in the area of energy which all of us here at Scoil Íosa hope will earn us our second Green Flag.

As this is our second time trying to get a Green Flag we already had a Committee in place. A number of the original committee members had left to attend secondary school so there were places to be filled. Also we felt that after serving for the last two years it might be a good idea for those still in the school to step down and let as many different people as possible have a chance to be part of the committee. To ensure continuity some children from 6 th class, decided to stay on the committee for this year. Our school secretary also agreed to continue as a member.

To make the selection process as fair as possible each child from 2 nd class to 6 th class was asked to write what they felt about the environment and to give reasons why they should be picked to serve on the committee. When the class teachers read through these, two people from each class were picked. The committee members are:

Shannon Kelly, Josh Regan, Dymphna Freyne- 6 th Class
Rebecca Curry, Thomas Gara- 5 th Class
Sean Tarpey, Áine Marren- 4 th Class
Kerry- Marie Sweeney, Shane Fleming- 3 rd Class
Brendan Vesey, Lisa Morley- 2 nd Class
Teresa Murphy- School Secretary
Michael Bracken- Class Teacher

Our Committee met twice a month to decide on our actions and to monitor progress. At each meeting one child kept minutes. The children were responsible for passing on information to their own classes while the children from 6 th Class took the added responsibility of passing information to children of junior and senior infants and 1 st class.

Environmental Review

For the first part of our review we decided to look at how our litter and waste management programmes are working out. Different members of the committee undertook different tasks. We discovered the following-

All milk cartons and other juice cartons (up to 40 per day) are being collected each day and brought to Ballaghaderreen recycling centre each week.

A lot of photocopying is being done on both sides of the paper. Those sheets of paper that aren't photocopied on both sides are being kept for reuse. Waste paper is being brought to Ballaghaderreen recycling centre once every week or else is being shredded and used as bedding for pets. Old envelopes are being reused. Pencils are pared into a special bin to be used for compost. Tea-bags, apple cores, bananas skins etc are put in special bins also to be put in our compostor each Friday.

Litter

We next looked at the area of litter. We noticed that after breaks our yard still had litter on it, which has to be picked up by our litter wardens. Two years ago we had decided to eat lunch inside but obviously not everyone in the school had kept to this aim. As well as wrappers etc there were also bits of sandwiches, buns biscuits etc thrown outside. We decided this was definitely an area we had fallen down on and that needed immediate attention. We painted a sign to encourage people not to dump rubbish at the Bottle Banks.

Energy

We decided to monitor each of our classrooms and the rest of the school for a few days, we noticed the following. Lights were left on unnecessarily at times. Computers were left running when they weren't in use.

The photocopier was left on standby. Windows and doors were left open at break times leaving out heat. Some radiators had rubbish thrown behind them. TV's were left on standby.

As a result of this we decided that we would start three campaigns. These are:

•  Last One Out Lights Out

•  Switch It Off

•  Keep Heat In

Action Plan

After our environmental review we as a committee felt quite satisfied that we are reaching almost all of our targets set out in our original action plan of two years ago. We decided that as well as continuing on with this we would also try to

•  Reduce the units of electricity we use in school

•  Reduce the litres of oil we use for heating in the school

Unfortunately when we rang the E.S.B we were told that our bills are based on estimates so instead we decided to read the meters ourselves every week. We got receipts for oil from our school treasurer and found out that 4350litres of oil were used in the school from September '04 until June '05. We are hoping to reduce that amount this year.

Day of Action

On Friday January 20th we travelled by bus to Raheen Barr Windfarm near Castlebar. All of the committee and 3 rd and 4 th class went on the trip. Julie Brett of Ecopower ltd. travelled especially from Kilkenny to show us around. After being lost a couple of times we eventually reached our destination in The Nephin Mountains. We were amazed to see how high the turbines were when we were close to them. Julie said that they were 52metres high. We could also hear the loud whirring sound they make. There were 22 turbines in all and Julie let us go inside one where she explained to us how wind is used to make electricity. She also explained that the blades on the turbine can change direction depending on where the wind is coming from. Also, if there is a storm the blades can go sideways to protect themselves. Julie also said this site was especially chosen for the windfarm as it gets very windy. She explained that at the top of the turbine there is a gearbox the size of a minibus that helps to turn the wind into electricity. There were black cables inside the turbine that carried 10,000 volts each. We also learned that the turbines are especially built so they can be replaced after 25 years and that bog can be put back where they were, so you wouldn't know they were ever there.

We were amazed to learn that it cost 18.5 million euro to build the farm. We learned as well that a turbine can make enough electricity in about a minute to power a house for a year. We had a brilliant day at Raheen Barr and we feel we know a lot more about wind power now.

Meanwhile back at the school everyone else was involved in an internal spring clean. There was a major emphasis on cleaning behind radiators to make sure heat wasn't blocked. We intend to do a big spring clean outside when conditions dry up.