Student leaders of the Green Plan helping outdoors this afternoon!

Following our Zoom call with Rebekka Wollmeister today, we were awarded funding from the Accenture Sustainable Community Challenge - Ireland, supported by Accenture to start The GreenPlan in our community! Thanks Rebekka, we can’t wait to get started! Thanks to ChangeX too! #AccentureUKISustainableCommunity

Every day in our school, after big break, a different class puts on disposable gloves, gets refuse bags, collects the litter pickers from outside Kieran (our caretakers) office, and picks up litter on our school grounds. Today Ms Mc. Cague’s class did it so carefully. Well done 4th class!

Our Green Plan / Green Schools student leaders helped to organise a container for school staff to donate cans of in-date non-perishable food. Our target is 70 cans, and we hope to complete that very soon! We will then link with a local food charity. Two members of staff have kindly agreed to get it to the food charities.

We went to Shannon Recycling Centre and recycled all of the used batteries we collected this week at school. We hope to continue recycling batteries from now on!

Presentation Primary School Green Plan Action plan:

Timeline: 12 months - 36 months +

When will you be able to start your project? We will be able to start this project immediately. We need to purchase some items as part of the project such as energy monitors, used battery collection containers, water hippos etc, but we can still start certain steps immediately (such as Litter Collecting, Clothing for Recycling, Bug Hotel creation etc)

How often will your team meet? We will meet monthly. We can create a WhatsApp Green Plan group if necessary, and use email to update on any progresses made.

Are there any key dates to share for the project?
We plan on dividing the various parts of this project into phases. Phase one - the aim would be to complete that before June 30th 2023– Biodiversity, Energy, Water, Clothing and Batteries, Non Car Day .
Phase 2 (remaining Green Plan steps) will commence in September 2023 and be completed by December 2023.

Budget: 600euro We see our budget being spent primarily on the necessary equipment and tools to get this Green Plan underway. We need to purchase energy monitors, water hippos, more litter collecting devices, wildflower meadow seed, gardening equipment (we have none besides a lawnmower!) collection boxes per school corridor for batteries, containers and ingredients for home cleaning spray etc.

How will your community benefit from this project?
Our school community, from children to staff would increase environmental awareness by doing little actions individually to help improve the environment collectively.

Our school is in the inner city of Limerick, in an area that is not usually associated with reducing carbon emissions as its an area with a lot of concrete, building construction, warehouses, apartment blocks, and beside the main bus and railway station in the region. So engaging in the Green Plan would bring our staff and students and wider community closer together as every cohort will be taking part in this, not just students.

Do you have any measurable goals for your project, such as the number of people that will participate?
Our school has a current student population of 260 pupils, and all of these children will be positively impacted by our participation in The Green Plan. As the years progress, within a matter of 5 years, our participation will impact over 1000 children and their families.

Are you hoping to spread knowledge or increase interest in a specific subject? We will document our work for The Green Plan on our Changex page, our school website Live News Feed and Green Schools Section (www.preslimerick.ie), and on our school Instagram account also.

If your project requires physical space, have you decided the location? Our whole school building and its surrounding lawned area (back of the school) and concrete area (front and side of our school) are the main physical spaces. We are an inner city school, but we are fortunate to have enough space to plant a wildflower meadow. Our pupils are superb at helping with waste management in terms of litter wardens weekly. They will help the school achieve many of the steps such as bringing in unwanted clothing for recycling, and bringing in batteries for recycling, assisting in making the eco-friendly homemade cleaning spray, building the bug hotel etc.

Do you have all necessary permission and permits to carry out your project at the chosen location? Yes