King’s Bruton Eco Committee Relaunches Food Waste Campaign

This year is the Eco Committee’s second year at King’s Bruton. They started in September 2021, thanks to one pupil’s proactive attitude and interest in the cause, and they have successfully continued their aim to make the school greener through initiatives like reducing food waste, rewilding and recycling.

The schools main aim last year was to earn an Eco Schools Green Flag award, which they achieved in July with a Distinction. Earning this flag took a lot of dedication in several areas, and it was extremely rewarding for them to find out that their hard work had paid off. Working towards this award was also especially useful in encouraging them to consider lots of aspects of environmental friendliness in the school, such as food waste and recycling, which have been at the forefront of their focus in accordance with their Eco Code of ‘Recycle, Reduce, Rewild’.

This Christmas term, they have relaunched their food waste campaign to keep people thinking about their impact. As well as proposing ideas to help normalise vegetarian and vegan meals in the dining room. This follows a successful initiative last year, which resulted in a notable decrease in food waste and an increase in conversations about food waste, driven by assemblies, posters, and surprising facts! They’ve also prioritised recycling, providing mixed-recycling bins for all classrooms and boarding houses. This simple change will help promote more sustainable practices within the school and reduce the amount of waste simply going to landfill.

Additionally, the school looked towards rewilding areas of the school that were unused and could be used to attract wildlife; rewilding means allowing land to return to its natural state so that nature can thrive and is an exciting process to watch happen. For example, they have worked on rewilding the riverbank by planting wildflowers and creating a rewilded path, and this is becoming an appealing and relaxing place for pupils to visit to feel surrounded by nature. Particularly in the warm weather, the school feels that this will be an exciting place to relax and socialise in, and they are incredibly grateful to the Friends of King’s Bruton who have bought them benches to use in these areas.

King’s Bruton started this year with a Sustainability Week, featuring presentations in assembly and tutor time to encourage discussion of eco-friendly behaviours. As part of this week, they held a clothes swap to promote sustainable fashion. And the school are likely to do this again as it was incredibly popular.

The pupils are in the early stages of negotiating with the Bursar about the School’s energy use. Although they have some solar panels at school, they would like to get more. Also, they are asking the school to be more transparent about its energy use, for example, releasing statistics about the percentage of the energy that is supplied by their solar panels. The school has made progress on lighting since last year, with motion sensing lights installed in the science building. Most of the lighting is LED but the school say they could still do more to ensure a higher level of energy efficiency.

Overall, the Eco Committee has been remarkably successful. King’s Bruton are looking forward to embarking on several new ventures, such as creating eco-friendly Christmas decorations. If you’d like to keep up with their projects, you can find them on Twitter at @KSB_Eco as well as on their Eco Committee webpage on the King’s Bruton school website.

See King’s Bruton School’s online listing here.