Applemore College Achieves Eco-Schools Silver Award

Applemore College Eco Committee have led the school community to achieve Eco-Schools Silver Award in just 5 months - faster than any other school in the New Forest.

Since achieving their Bronze Award in December 2015, the EcoCommittee have been focussing on sharing their plans with the College Council and involving the whole school community in taking action to make a difference in three key project areas: Energy, Waste and Recycling (this includes litter) and School Grounds. The motto for their Eco-Schools journey is ‘TEAM” – Together Everyone Achieves More, showing they understand that a lot of their work is about involving all the students in the school to make a difference for our environment.

Gill Hickman, New Forest Sustainable Schools Co-ordinator, visited Applemore College’s Eco Committee to review their progress and celebrate their Silver Award. The students told her about how their individual actions are making a difference and contributing to the success of the team – these actions ranged from placing thermometers in each classroom to check they were not too hot and wasting heat energy, running a fair stall to raise money for propagators to plant seeds, to leading a student team of litter pickers and applying for funding towards the Quiet Quad development.Much of this progress has been with the support and advice from expert visitors who have provided the Eco Committee with information, training and resources for their projects. These include:

• Graeme Lamkin, a landscape gardener from Arum Design, whose expertise is much appreciated within the Quiet Quad Project.
• Cathy Cook, Schools Energy Project Co-ordinator who donated room thermometers and helped the team identify heat loss with a thermal imaging camera.
• Rachel Butler, Hampshire Recycling, who discussed recycling with the Eco Committee to support their implementation of recycling bins across the school.
• Mandy Pickard from New Forest District Council, who is supporting the ‘Love Where You Learn’ litter initiative at Applemore College and has run litter assemblies, ensuring the whole school community is involved in keeping the school clean.
• Councillor Peter Armstrong, Litter Champion for the New Forest District, who led Applemore College’s Clean For the Clean Litter Pick Event on 4^th March 2016.
• NFDC Chairman Councillor Mrs Alison Hoare attended a litter assembly and presented certificates to Clean for the Queen student participants.
• Paul Jupp from Meadow in my Garden, who is working with the Eco Committee to create areas of wildflowers in the school grounds.
• Councillor Sue Bennison visited the GardenMore team to advise and support their planting plans for this year.

The Eco Committee students are excited to have their work recognised with the Silver Eco-Schools Award, team members Romany and Ami commented “The meeting with Gill Hickman went really well, and we explained what we have been doing. We are so happy to have got the Silver Award and that we are now close to getting our Green Flag, which will mean we’ve done so much to improve our environment.”