Green-School’s Program in Coláiste na Ríochta

In September 2017, our school established a new green schools committee, which consists of students from various years. Since then we are working hard to maintain our Litter and waste flag and at the same time we are planning and implementing various different activities to help us achieve our second green flag for Energy.

 To maintain our Litter and waste flag we are promoting recycling throughout the school and maintaining our weekly litter-picking schedule on Thursdays to keep both the front and back of the school clean and litter free.

Over the next two academic school years we will be working on the energy theme. For this we have various activities planned including:

• Invite Tidy Towns representatives into our school to speak to students
• Conduct an environmental review – check how much energy is our school using/wasting
• Carry out energy questionnaires – see what and how much people know about energy
• Create a new green code – specific to energy ‘Be cool – save energy and fuel’
• Invite Gavin Harte to our school – Pedal for Energy Day of Action - a workshop specifically designed to build awareness of energy with the hope of building an energy saving behaviour in our school.
• ‘What’s a watt’ presentation – students will get active in this energy awareness tool that monitors the energy created by a stationary cyclist allowing students to view every day energy demands.
• Create posters to raise awareness of energy conservation
• Plan a ‘switch it off’ day
• Maintain our level of energy conservation by carrying out spot checks and ensuring all staff/students are aware of energy saving methods
• Invite Angela Wall, Environmental officer, to our school to monitor our progress.

Our first Green school’s committee was established back in October 2013 and since then we have been working very hard on the theme of Litter and Waste in order to achieve our first flag. We have planned and implemented a number of initiatives over 18 months to try and raise awareness within the school about the Green School’s program and also environmental issues in general, these include; 

• Inviting our local Litter warden and Tidy Town representatives into the school to speak with the students
• Held a Green school’s Christmas Quiz in December 2013 to raise money
• Created a Retreat Garden Area on the School Grounds
• Invited Michael O’Coilean, Environmental Officer, to speak with the students
• Had a stall at the Farmers Market in Listowel
• Established a new bin system within the school
• Had a Green school’s cake sale in November 2014 to raise money
• Complete weekly Litter picks at lunch time on Fridays
• Took part in the National Spring Clean 2015

 This year a new committee was established and we held a poster competition to create a Green School’s Code for the school which was then voted on by all staff and students. A first year student, Shane Evans won the competition with the following code;

“Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do or Do Without”

We completed a review of our litter and waste and were delighted to see that we have achieved over 50% reduction in our general waste, a 36% increase in recycling bins and have established a composting system that is working well. We are very proud to say that we were approved for our first Green school’s flag which was presented to us by an Taisce on the 26th of May 2015.