Who are we?

At St. Augustine's the Eco Committee is led by Mrs Goodwin (Reception  teacher) a member of the Senior Management, Mr Crooks (teaching assistant) and representatives from the school Governors. The Eco Team is also supported by the Site Manager

Mr Gaughan.

The Eco Council is made up of members from each class, ranging from Years 1-6. Each member is elected and voted for by their peers. The Eco Council meets up every fortnight to voice their ideas and discuss the next projects.  

Year 6 also play a significant role as Eco-Rangers. Six members carry out energy checks on each classroom and grade each class based on the devices and equipment they have remembered to switch-off.

Towards the end of the year the current Year 6's pass their role and their experiences on to the Year 5's as they prepare to take on more responsibilities within the school. 

September 2023 - Our New Eco Team

Our New Eco Team with their classes’ Eco mascot!

October- Solihull Greener Schools Award

We have won the Solihull Greener Schools Award Level 1 and 2 and have been sponsored by John Lewis!

September 2022 - NEW POND

The Eco Team have had a busy couple of months, not only did we win the bid for £1000 from the Tel Group but we also won just under £10,000 from the National Lottery as money to put towards rebuilding our pond. 

An organisation called Organic-Gro have been busy clearing the weeds from the old pond area and have begun building a new bridge and pond. We can't wait to see what it looks like when it's finished. 

June - Pond Application

This month members of the Eco team have been working on a design for a new school pond/garden area and have been busy creating an application for possible funding for this. Fingers crossed.

June - Clean Air Day

Our Eco team promoted walking, scooting or cycling to school this week as part of #CleanAirDay. Children have been thinking about the impact pollution can have on their health and are trying to encourage family members to make more sustainable choices

March - Waste Week

It's Waste Week at St. Augustine's this week. Messages appeared in chalk on the playground last week as the Eco Team attempted promote the week by saving paper.

Toy Amnesty. Please bring in anything with a plug, USB charge or batteries...even those broken flashy toys. There will be a bag by the gate and inside the school by our Eco board.

At lunchtimes we will be providing a special bin for sandwich children to put their empty crisp packets in so that they can be recycled.

The Big Battery Hunt this year would like you to take your batteries to your local recycling point, which is usually your local supermarket. This is great for the environment as it means no big trucks on the road!

February - Toy Amnesty 

November - Switch Off Fortnight & No Electricity Day

The Eco Team launched Switch Off Fortnight this month and challenged everyone to switch off lights and devices when they were leaving a room or simply not using them.  This ended in a No Electricity Day when we had a day without using our interactive whiteboards, using the natural light from outside instead and having a cold lunch at lunchtime. 

November - 2021

Recycling Ink Cartridges

Please help our school earn money by bringing in your empty ink cartridges and helping the environment at the same time. 

October
Meet our new Eco Council!

May 2021

Gardening Club

This summer term the Eco Council has been joined by members of the School Council and RE council after school as we try develop our outdoor spaces. 

We have a lot of weeding and planting to do around the school!

WASTE WEEK 

The Eco Team met virtually this week and came up with different ideas that we could carry out during Waste Week this year. As a school we will be:

• Collecting used crisp packets again for the Crisp Packet Project (see video below)
• Asking all pupils to keep a 'My Waste Diary' at home to see how much food they waste and think what could be done with it instead.
• Asking children to enter the 'Great Busta Bake Competition'. For inspiration look at the Amazing Waste Cookbook and Busta Banana Bake Cookbook in the Waste Week Resources https://www.st-augustines.solihull.sch.uk/waste-week/
• At lunchtimes ask children to eat all their food and waste as little as possible.
• At lunchtimes ask sandwich children to use reusable packaging or non single use plastic packaging. 
• Continue to recycle using the correct bins. 

December 2020

Switch-off Fortnight

Thank you to everyone who took part in Switch-Off Fortnight and No-Electricity Day. When Switch-off Fortnight was compared to the previous two weeks we managed to save £39.82 on our electricity bill. You can see this from the graph, the turquoise line is the first week and the blue line is the second, the impact of No-Electricity Day can be clearly seen.

October Half-Term

The Eco Team need everyone to collect all their empty crisp packet and bring them into school for us to send to a wonderful volunteer group that are turning empty crisp packets into sleeping bags for the homeless community.

It takes 150 - 300 crisp packets to turn into one sleeping bag.

October - No IDLING ZONE and WALK TO SCHOOL WEEK

This October the Eco Team have launched a 'No Idling Zone' outside of the school, reminding people to turn off their engines if they are parked. Hoping to raise people's awareness about the damage car fumes can cause young lungs and the environment.

At the same time we are having a Walk to School Week before we finish for half term. Challenging children to either walk, scoot or cycle to school for the week.

September - Recycling message from the Eco Team!

Although the Eco Team can't hold assemblies this year or meet like we would do usually, they have however been working very hard to send a special video to every class to make them aware of how to recycle in school and use paper towels sparingly. 

March 2020- Waste Week - Plastic Free Week

The Eco Team have been busy planning for Waste Week this March. Thiking about how we can reduce the amount of ‘single use plastic’ that is used in school.

We are planning to hold a ‘Plastic Free Week’ beginning on Monday 16th March and ending on Friday 20th March. 

Here is our plan/wish list of things we are going to do and work towards:

1. We are going try and get rid of single-use plastic bottles at school and encourage everyone to have a re-useable water bottle (for now, we will be stopping the use of re-usable cups outside classrooms for hygiene purposes).
2. KS2 pupils to bring Fruit at snack times and nothing with wrappers on them for the week (This links in with the Healthy Schools Award). Infant classes should not be bringing in any snack for break time, as school provides fruit for Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children.
3. At lunchtimes, we are going to ask sandwich children to use reusable containers to hold their lunch in and not use Clingfilm or any single use plastic.
4. We plan to write a letter to the Council to ask them to stop sending plastic spoons with the ice cream and yoghurts, as we have plenty of metal spoons.
5. A plastic recycling bin will be placed into the lunch hall, so that we can measure how much we are saving.
6. A mixed recycling bin will go into the staffroom, to encourage staff to recycle too.
7. As a school, we are going to stop using plastic reading folders and start using the card folders we already have.
8. We have signed up to the Walkers Crisp Packet recycling scheme, a bin will be placed in the lunch hall.
9. Start using our fruit waste to go in the compost bin.
10. Sign up to Bic Pen recycling scheme.

November 2019- Switch off Fortnight and NO ELECTRICITY DAY

For two weeks in November the Eco Team launched Switch-off Fortnight. Each class was encouraged to try to remember to switch lights and devices off using our colour code system. Green for switch me off. Orange for ask a teacher. Red for leave me on.  At the end of the two weeks Year 2 and Year 6 won the eco mascot for having gained the most points for saving the most electricity at lunchtimes.

We also had a NO ELECTRICTY DAY/OUTDOOR LEARNING DAY on the Tuesday where we tried our best to keep the lights off and use natural lighting. The teachers taught without laptops or interactive whiteboards. The cooks also provided packed lunches having turned the kitchen off. WE SAVED £16!

Looking at the first week of Switch-off fortnight our estimated cost was £129.87 and 1025kWh consumption of electricity. Compared to the week before it was £153.53 and the consumption was 1,211kWh. We saved £23.66. 

November 2019 - Wildlife Ways

The Eco Team wore their wellies today as they took part in the Wildlife Ways project to develop green spaces in Solihull. We went to Tudor Grange Park and planted lots and lots of bulbs. They should make an appearence by May 2020.  

September 2019- NEW ECO TEAM!

July - Litter Club

In July the Eco Team, Eco Rangers and friends started cleaning up the field and playground from the litter, making it clean for the children and safe for the animals around us.

April - The Big Battery Hunt

Today the Eco Team launched The Big Battery Hunt in assembly. They challenged the school to collect as many old batteries as possible to be recycled.

Switch-off

Thanks to each class remembering to switch off their lights and devices and lunchtimes we have saved more than £5 on our school electricity bill this March compared to March 2018. The Eco-Team have gained £5 towards eco projects in the future. 

Well done to Year's 1 and 3 who collected the most points and have switched off the most this term!

January 2019 - Energy Audit

The School Eco Council met with Mr Smith Director of The School Energy Efficiency organisation. Mr Smith explained to the Eco Council how he used a Thermal Camera to carry out an energy audit of the school. 

November 2018 - Switch-Off Fortnight

The school came together in an attempt to save electricity. The Eco Team worked hard to involve the whole school with an assembly that launched Switch Off Fortnight. The Eco Team carried out some secret audits of classrooms, highlighting where we could switch off lights and devices to save electricity. Mr Keith informed us that we had managed reduced our electricity output at the end of the two weeks. We hope to continue our efforts into the new year.