Green Flag Committee

We are working hard towards gaining our first Green Flag under the direction of Ms. Cooke and the Green Flag Committee. Our committee is made up of various children from different classes - Saoirse O' Dowd, Jennifer O'Donoghue, Niall Doolan, Alannah Treacy, Naoimh O' Connor, Holly Heverin, Mikey Kirwan, Bronagh Doolan, Aine Ryan, Maeve Fenton, Aideen Ryan, Declan Murphy, Shane Duhig.

Rainwater Harvesting

Our Rainwater Harvesting Tank is saving us a huge amount of water and helping to reduce our water bill. Rainwater travels down roof, into the gutters and flows down into a large concrete tank that is buried underground. This tank has a pump and a special U.V. filter that filters the water before re-entering the school. The water is then pumped to the toilets and wash-basins. In Glenmore N.S. we are constantly trying to reuse our natural resources and reduce waste.

Our Green School Committee 2015-2016

In September we held a Green School poster competition. The winners of this competition formed our new Green School Committee. They are Jack Barry, Alex Whelan, Danielle Griffin, Aoife Byrne, Erin Foley and Charlotte Maher from 6th Class. Holly Hughes, Ciarán Vereker, Alex Philpott and Grace Heffernan from 4th and 5th Class. Sarah Mackey, Ella Hoynes and Leah Heffernan from 2nd and 3rd Class. Kaitlyn McNamara and Ruaidhrí Heffernan from 1st Class. Louise Vereker and Saorlaith Mullally from Junior and Senior Infants.

Summary of work completed in 2014 - 2015

Hello everybody,

Brónagh and I (Áine) were on the Green Flag Committee last year, we are going to tell you about what we did for our school.

Last year, Brónagh and I got a bird’s eye view map of the school. Ms. Cooke told us to go to the playground and the field, we looked where the rubbish was on the playground then in red pen we marked it on our map.

The teachers and pupils came up with a brilliant idea, which was a Waste Free Day. On the Waste Free Days the whole school would bring in no wrappers in their lunch box. We brought in no wrappers, so there would be no rubbish on the playground or field.

We then got a sheet off Ms. Cooke, she told us to go into all the other classrooms and see if they had any wrappers in their lunchboxes. Áine and I tallied up the numbers. As a result of nobody bringing in wrappers in our class, we won homework vouchers.

During the year we had lots of meetings to discuss new ideas for the Green Flag Committee. As we wanted to keep our school clean and tidy, we got litter pickers and compost bins. These objects were very successful. We had a “Spring Clean Day” for our school too, this involved cleaning shelves, doors, floors and various other surfaces.

We hope you like our wonderful, hard work so far and hope it encourages you all to keep our school waste free.

By Brónagh Doolan and Áine Ryan (5th Class)

Our Day of Action

For our Day of Action, our Green Schools Committee collected all the cans we could and brought them to our local recycling centre.

All classes, from junior infants to sixth class collected cans to recycle. Some of the pupils collected cans from ditches along the roadside as they were walking to school. Others brought them from home to recycle them.

Mr Kennedy's class collected 118 cans, Ms Cooke/ Ms Aspel's class collected 316 cans. Ms Ryan's class collected 50 cans, Ms Keane's class collected 20 cans and Mr Grant’s class collected 80 cans.

We went down to our local recycling centre, class by class to recycle the cans. It was lots of fun!

By Ciarán Vereker and Alex Philpott

Surprise Lunchbox Survey

In October we had a Surprise Lunch Box Survey Day, to see how much waste we would bring to school on a regular day. Members of our Green Flag Committee surveyed each class to tally how much wrappers and waste we had in our lunch boxes. We had two people from 6th class (Jack Barry and Alex Whelan) draw out a graph to show students, parents and teachers the results.

Reusable Lunch Boxes and Drinks Containers

As a school we encourage our students to use reusable lunch boxes and drinks. We are constantly trying to cut down on cling film and tin foil. Our committee organised a “Waste Free Day” every fortnight. On each Waste Free Day we have a competition to see which class can bring in the least amount of rubbish and wrappers.

Waste Mountain Day

We created a Waste Mountain on Tuesday 23rd of February. We had people collect the rubbish from all the lunch boxes in each classroom and put it together in our Waste Mountain. The reason for the Waste Mountain was so the children of Glenmore N.S. could see how much waste they bring in each day and to help us to reduce it. The children themselves offered up ideas on what they could do to reduce the amount of waste in our school.

Our Recycling Centre

The children of Glenmore N.S. have turned an old storage room into a recycling centre, with shelves for the cans, corks, batteries and old phones we have collected. We are hoping to make a Green School’s noticeboard with all the old corks. Our old mobile phone collection is in aid of Autism Action Ireland. The children have made posters, to help promote recycling in our school.

Our Green School Song

Last year the senior classes in our school created parodies of well known songs, to create our Green Flag song. We listened to each song and voted for "All About That Waste". This year the children from Mr. Kennedy’s class taught the junior classes "All About That Waste".

Glenmore National School