Terrington Hall School

Eco-Schools

As many of you know, Terrington Hall School was awarded the Green Flag Eco-Schools Award, becoming only the eighth Prep-School in the UK and the first in Yorkshire to receive the honour.

We are very proud of this achievement. We are committed to improving the environment of our school and to reducing the environmental impact of its activities as far as we can.

We believe that becoming an Eco-School is an important part of our responsibility to our local community and to educate our pupils to recognise their own future responsibilities as citizens and consumers.

The Green Flag Award is just as thought-provoking to keep as to earn, and the time has come when we must resubmit our green credentials and prove that we are worthy of keeping the flag.

Our Action Team

Achieving Eco-Schools status requires involvement from the whole school. To coordinate our environmental improvements and to communicate these to the rest of the school we have appointed pupil representatives from each form.

Our Action Team comprises:

We meet once every half-term to discuss and agree progress towards our environmental objectives. If you would like to read the minutes of our meetings please click on the relevant icon.

	Eco school minutes of 1st meeting.
	Eco school minutes of 2nd meeting.
	Eco school minutes of3rd meeting.
	Eco school minutes of4th meeting.
	Eco school minutes of5th meeting.
	Eco school minutes of 6th meeting.

Our Eco-Code

Please click here if you would like to see our school’s Eco-Code

Action Plan

Our plans are to:

• reduce the amount of energy we use and water we waste
• reduce the amount of waste we throw away and increase the things we can recycle
• increase the amount of food waste we compost
• improve our school’s biodiversity by improving our wildlife garden and growing our own vegetables
• reduce litter
• communicate more widely about our global environmental responsibilities
• consider renewable energy supplies for the school
  

If you would like to see a copy of our Action Plan please click here.

Progress so far

UPDATE SPRING 2011

We have been busy this term. Fraikin have contacted us and said that sadly the Common-Rail Diesel engines in our minibuses cannot run on biodiesel, but it is possible that our next leased vehicles will be able to - they will keep us informed.

However we achieved our Michaelmas Term goal of winning the Big Wildlife Garden Gold Award for the school wildlife garden (one of only 200 schools nationwide to win this), and are now moving on to the next stage, which is the Green Award. This is supported by our gaining of the Silver Award in the Green Tree Schools scheme run by the Woodland Trust - and we are, at the time of writing, making great strides towards the Gold Award. We have created a Sustainable School noticeboard opposite the Eco Schools noticeboard outside the Senior Science Lab to record our progress in the various award schemes.

We are preparing the Wildlife Garden as an enriched butterfly habitat and also setting up our butterfly monitoring scheme to keep track of butterfly numbers in the area as part of a national survey.

UPDATE AUTUMN 2010

We are investigating the possibility of running the school's minibuses on biodiesel. The existing LDV vehicles lack the engine technology to cope with the fuel but it is possible the new Ford Transit will be able to - Fraikin, our fleet managers, are confirming this.

We have formed a Biodiversity Committee of Henry Tannahill, Millie Grant, Emma Nelson and Rosanna Preston. As part of our celebrating 2010 as International Year of Biodiversity our Biodiversity Committee will research and deliver a presentation on Biodiversity to the school in the second half of the Michaelmas term

Our current project is to win the Big Wildlife Garden Gold Award and our Wildlife Garden Group will be pursuing this.

We will be working with the Yorkshire Butterfly Group on a Butterfly Monitoring Scheme in the Spring Term.

UPDATE SUMMER 2010

As part of the school's Ecoschools initiative, we have been taking part in Natural England's Big Wildlife Garden scheme. We are very happy to announce we have been recently awarded our Wildlife Garden Silver Award (one of only 408 across the UK), and plans are well advanced to gain the Gold Award to go alongside our Green Flag.

Update Spring 2008

• we have reduced the amount of gas we used from in the first quarter of 2008 compared with Q1 2007 by 2,344 litres
• we have reduced the amount of oil we consumed for heating in the year to date compared with the same period in 2007 by 3,700 litres
• we have reduced the amount of water we have used in the first quarter of 2008 compared with Q1 2007 by 2,500 litres
• we are now composting our food waste at the rate of 18 kgs /week or 700 kgs for the school year
• we are now recycling 325 kgs of cardboard/week, 400 kgs of glass and
  tin/week and 165 kgs of paper/week, a total reduction over the school year of 35 tonnes
• we are now growing our own vegetables in our own vegetable patch and at Stocksbridge. All the lettuce eaten at school since last week was grown by Years 3 and 4
• we have doubled the amount of fruit and salad we consume
• Overall we have reduced our consumption of oil,gas and water by around 33,500 litres per year and reduced our waste to landfill by 36 tonnes per year

Update Autumn 2007

• we have installed a low energy boiler for central and water heating
• we have installed individual thermostats for each block of classrooms
• we have installed push-on taps on all basins to save water
• we have added two new litter bins in the main square made from plastic
  recycled by Years 3 and 4
• we are now composting all of our organic food waste
• we are now recycling all of our cardboard and all of the waste paper from
  classrooms.