Green School Committee: September 2009

Green News

We held elections in school and the following students have been elected onto our Green Schools Committee:

Tony Scully, Crisabel David
Whitney Ward, Laoise Kelly Mc Guire
Jamylah Folan, Arina Kavanagh
Daniel Go, Priscilla Tshabalola

We will be working on the theme of TRAVEL this year.

We will be thinking about the different ways we travel to school and maybe we could improve them by walking ,cycling, carpooling with friends or by taking the bus.
Don’t forget that October is International Walk to School Month so put on your walking shoes and get fit!

WATER

A sample of some of our projects and artwork that we completed in our school.

The photo below shows our water barrel which is located in our school yard. Here, we collect rain water and we have used this water to take care of our plants in our 'Incredible Edible' project thus conserving water!

In February 2009 we received our third green flag for water conservation. Our whole school community worked hard to achieve this award. All toilets were fitted with a green button that allows for a quick/half flush and all our taps are self closing. We got a water barrel fitted to a drainpipe to collect rainwater to water our plants.

Energy Awareness

ENERGY

In 2007 we were awarded our green flag for energy.

We held a very successful “switch it off” campaign in school and we continue to save energy by switching off lights and electrical equipment when they are not needed and never leaving our computers on standby. The pupils took daily meter readings in the morning and afternoon to calculate how many units of electricity we used while in school. They recorded their results and this gave us great incentive to reduce our energy use. In Maths class they calculated our daily, weekly, monthly electricity costs and displayed their results graphically. We had a Low Energy Friday to help raise energy awareness in our school and were delighted that we had beaten our previous lowest unit consumption.

Mayor Niall O Brolchain presented our green flag for energy at a ceremony in the Galway Bay Hotel .


GREEN SCHOOLS

The green-schools programme plays an important part in daily life in Scoil an Linbh Íosa. Our pupils, staff and parents are very involved in looking after the environment in school and in our local community.

LITTER AND WASTE

Every effort is made to reuse, reduce and recycle school waste and we were awarded our green flag for Litter and Wastein 2005. Everyone was very excited the day we got our flag. We had a visit from Mayor Catherine Connolly and every class performed a song about litter and waste on the stage. The girls in 5th and 6th class had made costumes from various recycled materials in a Recycled Costume Making workshop with Solas Community Arts Group and treated us to a hilarious fashion show! We also had a visit from the Galway Independent newspaper.
All senior classes attended “Recycling the Magical Way” by Magician Marvin in the Town Hall Theatre and enjoyed the show.