Welcome to Saint Anthony’s Primary School Eco Council page. Our Eco Council work together, to provide our whole school community, with the tools to promote and develop a sustainable lifestyle. Our Eco-Council is made up of 10 pupils from P4 – P7, who work together with other members of our school community, to improve the quality of our school and encourage everyone to make environmentally friendly changes

How it Works:

We elect new Eco Council members each academic year. Then we:

• Hold regular meetings (at least once a month)
• Complete an Environmental Review annually.
• Choose 3 specific areas in our school to work on. For academic year 2019/2020 we have chosen to focus on:
  • Biodiversity
  • Energy
  • Waste
• Analyse, discuss and set appropriate and achievable targets within our key focus areas.
• Link our ideas to the curriculum delivered within our school.
• Check and monitor that successful improvements are being made.
• Keep the whole school and community up to date with progress that has been made.

So far this academic year (2019/2020) we have:

• Refined and developed our School Eco-Code.

Energy:

• Held a whole school competition to create an Energy Saving Mascot, chosen a winner and displayed the winner on our Eco-School board.
• Participated in Switch Off Fortnight and Energy Saving Week (see certificates).
• Primary 6 and Primary 7 participated in the Bryson Primary School Energy Efficiency Programme (see certificate).
• Invested in thermometers and placed them in a number of rooms around our school so that we can begin to collate room temperature data.
• Consistently recorded metre-readings on a weekly basis.
• Replaced old windows and outside doors around our school – we hope that this will help us save energy and heat in the months/years to come.
• Installed fire doors in different locations around our school – again we hope that this will help us save energy and heat in the months/years to come.
• Completed an energy check of our school building.

Waste:

• Primary 1 - Primary 7 have participated in Plastic Pollution talks with the Mid and East Antrim Recycling Officer Barry Tapester.
• Primary 3 and Primary 4 have reused materials to create junk models as part of their Recycling topic.
• Completed a bin survey to establish whether we had enough recycling bins around our school. We discovered that in some rooms we didn’t have enough bins and in other rooms the bins were in poor condition, so we ordered brand new bins for those designated areas.
• We observed and identified that there was a significant amount of waste being generated by Christmas Cards both by the cards themselves and the envelope’s that they were put into. So we decided to survey the pupils, we analysed the data and came up with an eco-friendly solution for the next academic year.
• Primary 1 - Primary 7 participated in a variety of ARC21 Recycling Bus Activities.
• Promote waste free lunches by encourage pupils to bring their lunch in in reusable containers. If they do bring wrappers/packaging into school, they are encouraged to bring their waste home to recycle.
• Primary 5 - 7 watched and participated in the Lyric Theatre Eco-School Production. This performance further facilitated raising awareness of littering and plastic pollution.
• The whole school has made a big effort to collect bottle lids which we hope to use to create a joint bottle lid mural together with the Primary 6’s and 7s from Larne and Inver P.S.
• The theme of our February Art Competition was – recycling. We encouraged pupils to use a combination of recyclable materials to complete their collage.
• Primary 1 - Primary 7 participated in Waste-Free Week (see certificate).
• Primary 1 - Primary 7 participated in their monthly litter pick at their designated area of responsibility in and around the school grounds.

Biodiversity:

• Completed a Biodiversity Survey to identify the areas that we are doing well and to highlight any areas that require improvement.
• Eco Council participated in gardening and maintenance duties with our school caretaker, Mr McRandle. They collected fallen leaves to create a leaf mould, turned the soil in the compost bin, prepared flower beds, planted and watered plants.
• Primary 4 Eco-Councillors attended an award presentation at Inver Garden Centre.
• Achieved our RHS School Gardening Level 1 Award (see certificate).
• Improved our Bug Hotel and made it a more habitable environment.
• Primary 5 designed and created bird feeders to be placed around the school grounds.
• Primary 5 also went on a joint trip to Castle Espie with Larne and Inver P.S. While they were there they participated in a bird watch, learned all about the different species of birds and how we can ensure their survival.
• Primary 1 and Primary 2 participated in the Big Bird Watch 2020 within our school grounds (see certificate).
• Primary 6 did their bit to improve biodiversity in our local community by participating in a wildlife walk, birdwatching and nest box building at Greenland Cemetery together with the Primary 6’s from Larne and Inver P.S.
• Primary 4 – Primary 7 took part in a Good Relations project with other schools in the local area. They made cards out of natural materials, planted seeds, made bird boxes, took part in an outdoor treasure hunt and made decorations from twigs.