Eco-Schools

Eco-Schools Scotland Green Flag Award

We are delighted to confirm that our Nursery has successfully attained the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award status. This is an outstanding achievement! KingsWellies have now successfully attained THREE Green Flags for our ongoing contribution to sustainablility. 

Assessment Feedback

The comments below are the assessor’s feedback on evidence we submitted in our online application. 

Congratulations on successfully renewing your Eco-Schools Green Flag Award! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your application and am very excited to read about the success you’ve had and how you are working to involve the whole nursery community.

We also noticed aspects of your work as being examples of good practice. We may use these on our website and social media as case studies to support other schools with their Eco-Schools Scotland work. 

Your action plan evaluations and supporting evidence very clearly demonstrate the successes that you have had as you have gone through your renewal journey. The photographs and charts included are an excellent way of demonstrating the impact of your actions and they clearly show just how much the children are enjoying the activities.

The fact that you are located in a business park presents its own challenges, but you appear to be successfully working with the companies around you and engaging them in the work that the children have been doing. 

It’s great to see that you are also identifying opportunities out-with your action play – the link with the HSE department at the airport sounds very interesting. I was also interested to read about the ‘adopt a bee’ project – I’m sure that will be fun and is a nice way to develop an understanding of biodiversity.

Your Green Flag is valid for a period of two years. As you now start your journey to renew your award by working through the Seven Element process please take into account the following suggestions. 

As you continue your Green Flag renewal journey, remember that you should plan to log on to the Online System and start your new journey right away. After you have completed your Environmental Review, chosen three appropriate Eco-Schools Scotland Topics (one of which must be littler) and one UN Sustainable Development Goal, you will then submit your Action Plans for approval before you being work. Please make sure that the three topics you choose cover the same two-year period and that all three topics are linked to your chosen UN Sustainable Development Goal. Don’t forget to include all activities and ideas you have in your Action Plans, so we can make sure they are all captured. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Keep up the great work! 

Download our Eco-Schools Action Plan

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  Nov 2019

  Eco-Schools Action plan

Recording of Food Waste Within the Setting

As seen by our graph above, over the past four terms we have increased the amount of food waste we are recycling.  From this, our general waste has been reducing also, this is great! The children are enjoying using the food waste bins to dispose of their left-over lunches and snacks and have also reminded staff to use them too!! Food waste accounts for over 40% of all waste going to landfill from the hospitality sector.  When food is buried in landfill sites it breaks down to produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. But if it's recycled, food waste can be turned into a plant fertiliser and even a source of renewable energy (depending on how it's treated).  Being aware of these statistics, we decided to have a shot at making our own compost. We collected particular food wastes and mixed them with waste from the gardens, cut grass etc. 

 The children and staff had to research how to care for the compost in order to make sure that they are treating it correctly for the process to happen.  Each day they take it in turns to check the thermometer and turn the waste.  The children helped Scott (the handy man) build the compost bin for us to make the compost in!! It was a great success. We are now using our very own compost in our Wellies allotments. 

Recording of Litter Picking

The children have thoroughly enjoyed participating in litter picks around our local community and settings!  We were quite shocked at the amount of litter that had been left lying around especially at the local Park and Ride area located in the business park.  After doing some brain storming with the children, we decided to make posters and display them around the business park, stating where the nearest bin was! The children then decided where they wanted to display their posters!  We continue to do fortnightly litter picks. We then record the amount of bags we collect in our charts.  We have been delighted to see the reduction in the amount of bags we have been collecting! All of our hard work has been paying off!!

Food and the Environment

For our topic – Food and the environment, we decided to do some research into growing out own fruit and vegetables and using them to make our own snacks and lunches.  Along with our teachers, the children researched which foods grow in certain months of the year. We then took a bus to the local garden centre to buy seeds and plants. This was a great experience for the children who also learned about road safety and dangers in the community and on public transport. The first vegetable the children decided to grow was carrots.  After doing a lot of research on how best to plant and look after them, the children planted their seeds.  We had to make sure they were watered every couple of days.  After about four months of looking after their seeds, the carrots were ready to be dug up.After digging up our vegetables and giving them a good wash, we decided to do some baking with them and offer it to our parents! The children decided to make carrot cake!! It was very yummy!