Green Team

The Green Team are a group of pupils who are committed to making our school more environmentally friendly. They lead activities with Mrs Taylor to help make Southwold greener! The Green Team work hard to save electricity, cut down on waste and recycle, reduce and reuse. They also teach and make other pupils ware about environmental issues.

Green Team Initiatives 2023-24 (click on the links below to find out more)

Introduction To The Green Team Autumn 2023 24

Green Team Waste Week Y6 Pupil Leaders Spring 2024

Green Team Initiatives 2022-23

Recycling With The Green Team 23.09.23

Waste Week Part A

Waste Week Part B PPT

The Green Team meets regularly to discuss current global environmental issues and ways that school can reduce waste and support environmental issues.  This has included the Green team leading sessions to children across the whole school to teach them about the importance of composting and recycling materials in order to do so.  Each class created their own ‘compost bottle’ to watch how certain materials decomposed.  Each class also has their own compost bin where materials such as fruit waste is put and Green team members then empty into the school compost bins weekly.

The school took part in ‘Waste Week 2023’, where the Green Team worked alongside our ‘Community Rangers’ to organise a ‘Toy Swap’ across school.  The Green team led sessions across the school teaching children about the importance of recycling materials, especially plastics, to reduce items going into landfill sites.  Children across the school all brought in unwanted toys to swap with other children so that toys were not just thrown away, reducing waste.  Children were also encouraged to make their own ‘Pledge’ on how they would promise to try and reduce waste.

The Green Team actively promote reducing waste across school.  This includes reducing ‘Food Waste’.  On a daily basis, members of the Green Team stand in the dinner hall monitoring how much food is being wasted, telling children if they are throwing too much food away and encouraging children to eat more.  Children who bring to the food clearing station an empty plate are rewarded with a ‘Clean Plate’ sticker by members of the Green Team.  Kitchen staff have commented on how much less the food waste seems to be in the bins from previous, showing the impact of the work the Green Team are doing across school.

In June 2023 school took part in a local campaign organised by ‘Green Hustle’ to promote Nottingham City council becoming the first land-locked city to support reducing pollution and waste in our oceans.  The Green Team led this campaign in school, leading sessions to all children in all year groups about the impact plastic pollution is having on our oceans and what we can do to reduce this.  Children across school worked together to make jellyfish and turtles by recycling plastic bottles.  The work of the children was then displayed in the Market Square in Nottingham City Centre as part of the 3 day ‘Green Hustle’ event.  Children and parents were informed of this event and of the work the children had created and were encouraged to go along and see their work displayed.  Later that term, our SIA visited school and spoke with some of our children as part of a ‘Review’.  He commented on how knowledgeable the children were about such environmental issues, showing the impact of being involved in such events on children’s knowledge and understanding of current environmental issues, helping to create our citizens of the future.

To continue the work our Green Team are promoting in school to reduce waste as well as healthy eating, we are currently taking part in the national campaign ‘Eat Them to Defeat Them’.  We began this in school with an assembly to launch the campaign and each child has taken home a ‘mission pack’ to earn stickers on a chart as they defeat vegetables by eating them.  The Green Team are leading weekly tasting sessions in their classes throughout the campaign to encourage their peers to ‘try’ vegetables in order to defeat them.  Children across school have also been very creative in decorating the vegetable of the week, as well as making hats and badges to wear for our weekly ‘Eat them to Defeat them’ dinner.  One parent has commented how this campaign has helped her child to eat some vegetables at home they may not have eaten previously, showing the positive impact being part of this national campaign is having on some of our children.