Green Schools History

Green-Schools is an international environmental education programme, offering a well-defined, controllable way for schools to take environmental issues from the curriculum and apply them to the day-to-day running of their school. The Green-Schools programme is run by FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education), and is known internationally as “Eco-Schools”. Green-Schools are now represented in over 53 countries from all over the world

Green-Schools is holistic. It aims to make environmental awareness and action an intrinsic part of the life and ethos of a school. Green-Schools endeavours to extend learning beyond the classroom and develop responsible attitudes and commitment, both at home and in the wider community.

Green-Schools is both a programme and an award scheme. The Green Flag award is now established as a well-respected and recognised eco-label.

There are many benefits to having the Green Schools programme in our school and these include:

· A way to build students confidence and sense of citizenship through participation

· To supply curriculum materials and ideas for projects and events

· To access a network of support agencies

· To link with other schools in Ireland and internationally

· To gain a prestigious award

· To provide local and national publicity

· For financial savings

· To reduce litter and waste

· To improve school environment

· To reduce energy consumption levels

· To involve the local community

St. Mary’s is committed to providing its students and staff with a clean and respected working and learning environment. The aim of the Green Schools programme and our committee is to make students, staff and the wider community aware of how their lifestyle choices affect the environment and to ensure that St. Mary’s continues as a green school into the future.

A team of enthusiastic, committed students make huge efforts to look at how our school can be more environmentally friendly and carry out green school initiatives.

We are a very proud Green School. We have achieved 9 Green Flags to date and are now working on our tenth.

We are working on the theme of Global Citizenship Food and Biodiversity. The Global Citizenship Food & Biodiversity theme consists of two main strands of work. The first strand focuses on local actions, including growing and eating food that is produced on the school grounds. The second strand focuses on global impacts, such as the positive impact that local actions can have, by interrupting the global food production system, and the environmental problems associated with it, eg by reducing the miles that food has travelled, or by avoiding the packaging waste associated with shop bought foods.

We hope to have some good news to share with our whole school community by the end of this year.