Our planet has never been in such a fragile state and putting things right can seem like a huge and impossible task. But every little measure we take, every responsible act towards helping our environment is a step in the right direction along a difficult but essential path. And if we all work together, our combined efforts can and will make a positive impact.
Here at NGHS we started 2024 as we mean to go on. January was Green Month across the whole school. Staff and students alike made pledges, took part in activities, watched inspirational productions and heard from influential speakers on a range of green issues. It’s been a really educational journey for all of us.
Sustainable Shopping
We welcomed visitors from Waste Nott which is an organic food shop in Nottingham which prides itself on its products and its minimal packaging, encouraging shoppers to bring in their own containers into which ingredients can be weighed directly. We also had groups of students visiting Shop Zero in the city centre which has the same ethos – minimal waste and minimal packaging by providing a service to fill containers brought in by customers. Both shops also sell reusable items, eco-friendly toiletries, and homeware. Our students enjoyed this new shopping experience and we hope they continue to do so in the future.
A Forest for the Future
We’ve had a couple of trips out to the Young People’s Forest at Mead in Heanor to support the ongoing work there by the Woodland Trust. Students from the Senior and the Junior School helped with a range of coppicing and thinning activities to help establish the young trees on the site and encourage new growth. This is a fantastic project which will create an extensive forest for future generations to enjoy and will benefit the environment hugely. We look forward to many more trips there in the future.
Special Guests
Several speakers have been into school to talk to our students about their work in sustainability:
- Alumna and Junior School parent, Lisa Hayes, delivered a thought-provoking Green Month workshop to girls in Years 4, 5 and 6. Lisa works for a business that seeks to make a positive difference through environmentally responsible manufacturing processes, and it was interesting to hear how her company, Ocean Bottle, is currently incentivizing the collection of waste plastic in developing countries to reduce its presence in the oceans. The workshop gave girls the opportunity to think carefully about cause and effect – namely human actions that produce CO2 emissions, and how this in turn contributes towards climate change, environmental damage and societal problems.
- Helen Puntha, also a parent and the Green Academy Lead at Nottingham Trent University, came to talk to our older students and deliver a workshop on global sustainability.
- Rachel Wibberley, Alumna (Class of 2017), talked to a mixed group about her career as a consultant in Deloitte’s Sustainability and Climate Strategy team. Rachel has previous experience in public sector policy and strategic communications. She served as a Delegate to the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women and the UN Human Rights Council, where she prioritised the empowerment of women and girls in global environmental governance. Her career highlights include leading the strategy of a cross government major programme to facilitate better climate policy making, partnering with NATO to deliver their Global Britain campaign, working with UN Women on Gender and Climate Change policy, and supporting an industry leading sustainability strategy for a major airline company. Our students were very engaged with her talk and had some interesting and thoughtful questions.
We’re very grateful to all of our guests for giving up their time to come and share their knowledge and expertise with our students.
Screenings and Workshops
Among our Green Month activities we also had screenings of the play Walden by Amy Berryman; terrarium and seed bomb workshops run by our Outdoor Learning team; litter picking, magnet fishing and toy swap initiatives at the Infant and Junior School, and second-hand clothing sales at both the Senior and Junior School. There’s been a tremendous effort by everybody!
Interview with Mr Jeremy Dunn, Eco Team and Green Steering Group rep
Mr Dunn is Director of Finance and Operations here at NGHS and also a valued member of our Eco Team. Jeremy is also a representative on the Green Steering Group for the GDST. We asked him a few questions about how the school is working towards a greener future:
Q. Firstly, can you start by explaining some of the steps we have taken as a school, that help work towards our green agenda:
A. We have been working towards improving our sustainability credentials for many years. As far as the school estate is concerned, we have many challenges with ageing buildings, many dating back to the Victorian era. Whenever we can, we include energy saving into the design of new buildings or refurbishment. For instance, the Performing Arts Centre is naturally ventilated – designed by a team from the University of Nottingham – and heating is aided by a ground source heat pump. In 2019, we replaced the interior lighting throughout the school with LED, and this year all exterior lighting will also be replaced with LED.
We also look very carefully at what we are buying, from disposables in the Dining Hall to cleaning products, making sure we reduce waste and only use sustainable products. Much of the food we eat in the Dining Hall is locally sourced. And we are changing our waste disposal contractors to one with better green credentials.
Q. Following on from the above question, we have a fantastic new Sports Centre, can you explain some of the strategies that have been implemented here, to ensure we are delivering our sustainability goals:
A. The new Sports Centre was a combination of refurbishing the old buildings as well as new build. One of our aims was to ensure heating and ventilation was sustainable. We replaced all the plant with air source heat pumps, as well as installing new radiant heating panels in the Sports Hall and Upnah Gym. There is also a new, more efficient ventilation system.
Q. What has been the biggest challenge NGHS has faced in delivering our sustainability goals?
A. Not only do we have some very old buildings, but we have some old heating plant. As always, the challenge to resolving this is time and money. There is a plan with the Girls’ Day School Trust to replace this plant over the next few years, but sadly new technology – like air source heat pumps – isn’t always the answer. There is a plan, however, to move away from gas to using electricity.
This year we are starting a project to repair roofs and windows across the estate, which will certainly help with heat loss.
Q. As part of the Senior Leadership Team and the School’s Eco Team, how do you engage both students and staff in our sustainability initiatives?
A. It is really important that the whole school community is engaged with the green agenda. Along with Miss Oakley and myself, Miss Whitehead, Mrs Lawson and Miss Simmons are working together to drive the agenda forward. We regularly report back to staff at staff meetings. We have Eco Sixth Form Eco prefects as well as eco reps across the school. Junior School pupils are particularly involved. They took part in the GDST’s We Are One project and some Year 6 pupils went to Wimbledon school last year to meet up with pupils from other GDST schools. This year the Junior School have been looking at food waste in the Dining Hall with amazing results. Food waste was measured over a three-day period and following the results, suggestions were made and acted upon as to how waste might be reduced:
Pupils have been reminded that they may request smaller portions
Younger girls whose parents help to choose their food have been encouraged to be more involved in those choices, and a huge reduction in waste has already been noted.
As part of Green Month, we are launching a new energy project across the school. We are one of only six GDST schools who are working with a company called Energy Sparks. Together, we are looking at ‘getting energised’, reducing our energy usage across the school, and ‘beating our baseline’ which will look at our energy usage from things which are ‘always on’.
Everyone has a part to play from turning lights off and turning radiators down, to recycling and reusing.
Q. And finally, what’s next for NGHS and our sustainability mission?
A. I am on the Green Steering Group at the GDST, so I am involved with the GDST’s sustainability strategy and help communicate this to schools. There are three strands: education, behaviour and operations.
There are no perfect solutions to sustainability, but through ambitious targets mixed with healthy pragmatism and inspired by our school community we can push forward our environmental agenda and should look forward to the future with confidence.
As you can see, Green Month has been really busy, everybody has been really engaged across the whole school and we have all learnt lots. The important thing now is to maintain this momentum and put into practice all of the things that we know we can do to improve our green credentials and work more sustainably as a school to protect our environment.
The youngest children here are our ambassadors and our future, and we really do hope that by the time they are adults, we will all be reaping the benefits of the behaviour and practices we’re putting into place today.
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