Sustainability
Over the last few years, we have been looking at ways that we, as a school, and with the wider community, can become a more sustainable place to work and learn. There have been some highly visible initiatives over the last few years- recycling bins, our food waste collection and the energy-saving stickers which are in every room around the campus.
Ms Helen was integral in helping raise the profile of sustainability across the campus, but sadly, she has relocated to a new life in South America. To ensure the momentum of the initiatives she began and to keep driving forward our efforts in terms of sustainability, we have appointed Mr Ewen from Y4 and Mrs Susan as our new Environment and Sustainability Coordinators. They will be running the EcoBeasts after school activity, which is a fantastic opportunity for KS2 students to take a proactive role in helping make St Andrews a more sustainable school.
Even though she has left the school and country, Ms Helen has briefly returned to Thailand to help organise this year's Community Action Day- on Monday 7th October- which will kick-off this year's Sustainability Week at the Primary campus.
Recently, Mr Ewen and Mrs Susan attended a workshop organised by Chulalongkorn University, whose aim was to improve Environmental Education in Thailand. Mr Ewen explains more below:
Mrs Susan and I were pleased to receive invitations to attend a consultation workshop on improving environmental education in Thailand.
Organized by Chulalongkorn University and the United Nations Environment Program, the workshop aimed to provide recommendations for improving environmental education in Thai schools. These were submitted to the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
Ms Helen, who many of you will remember, also attended and is now working full time on her EcoBeasts network of International Schools and local sustainability groups. She spoke about her work setting this up this and the next steps for the project. We intend to stay very much involved with EcoBeasts at St Andrews.
We met a range of experts in this area, and shared STA’s achievements in sustainability so far. It was a great opportunity to showcase our recycling and Meatless Mondays projects as well as gain ideas for the future.
And well done to Year 8 student Lilly, representing 'Bye Bye Plastic Bags,' who gave a speech alongside Midori and Iga (also Y8) to the VIPs and delegates about the importance of sustainability education. Lilly concluded by saying that she hopes sustainability will become as important as maths in schools nationwide. St Andrews is proud to support this.