Our Eco Reps: Helping Farlington to go green

The Farlington Eco Reps were hard at work with Mrs Edgar last week, undertaking various initiatives to raise awareness of environmental issues and find practical ways to encourage our school community to make the right choices when it comes to preserving and protecting our environment, on a local and global level. 

Our Year 5 and Year 7 Eco Reps made a trip to Horsham at lunchtime on Thursday to visit the children’s toy shop FairKind Child, to find out about how they operate as a Fairtrade, ethical business. Our students asked some great questions and made lots of notes. Mrs Edgar bought the Year 5 Eco Reps a beautiful Fairtrade doll, which was made in Sri Lanka, for them to look after for the year in their classroom, and the Year 7 students chose a Fairtrade knitted banana!

After school on Thursday, our Eco Reps from Years 4 to 10 enjoyed some training, focusing primarily on recycling, with Carrie Cort from Sussex Green Living, a multi-award-winning charity that provides inspiration for living sustainably in West Sussex and facilitates initiatives that benefit both the local community and the planet. This was a really useful session, during which the students discussed initiatives for encouraging more recycling at school - the Eco Reps are already spearheading our recycling drives for textiles and printer ink cartridges, which have had a great response from our school community.

Learning about environmental issues at Farlington is not limited to our Eco Reps, however. On Thursday afternoon, our Year 7 students enjoyed an Environmental Ethics Workshop, also delivered by Carrie Cort from Sussex Green Living, during which they learned about the impact so-called 'fast fashion' has on the environment. Carrie provided the students with a really interesting insight into the 'fast-fashion' industry and the concept of 'fast-fashion miles', with a focus on the impact on the environment and climate change. As a follow-up, students will be doing pieces of writing summarising what they have learnt. These pieces will be sent to Sussex Green Living for entry into their newsletter, which will be published in the West Sussex County Times.

Year 7 also enjoyed a fascinating geography lesson on Thursday, during which they analysed past climates through the in-depth study of ice cores. Over the next few weeks they will be building on their work on environmental issues, submitting fashion designs to the Purple Community Fund (PCF), a charitable organisation that provides sustainable opportunities to families experiencing extreme poverty in the Philippines. Our students' designs will be taken to Manila and made by the women who are employed by the PCF to create the products. The garments will then be sold, and the proceeds raised will be used to support families living in the 'dump slums' of Manila, providing them with much-needed daily essentials. 

Thanks to brilliant initiatives and experiences such as these, we are confident that – under the expert guidance of Mrs Edgar and our Eco Reps – we are in a strong position as a school to make a positive impact on our environment, both locally and globally.