Eastbourne College is the 2023 Tatler Schools Award ‘Eco-Warrior’ Winner
Eastbourne College is thrilled to have been awarded the 2023 Tatler Schools ‘Eco-Warrior’ Award. The award is presented to the school that has gone green and champions environmentally-friendly initiatives.
Eastbourne College is constantly looking at ways to educate its pupils about their own impact on the environment and how they can make a difference.
In addition to our continual recycling programmes, Eastbourne College’s most recent environmental initiatives include:
- Pupils helping to develop ideas to turn a walkway along the South Downs into a hub for interactive environmental education. The School has worked closely with Sir Tim Smit, from the Eden Project, and his team. Sir Tim visited the school in October 2022 to discuss taking ideas further forward.
- A number of our sixth form pupils taking part in a pupil engagement programme being run by the House of Lords Environment and Select Committee. They are looking into how best to teach behaviour change in schools to reduce carbon footprint. Baroness Parminter, the chair of the committee, recently came to Eastbourne College for discussions with pupils from Eastbourne College and other local pupils.
- Eastbourne College staff have met with the Environment Agency team. They are overseeing a proposed £100 million shore defence programme from Pevensey to Eastbourne. Further pupil engagement will take place in what is hoped will be a model for other coastal regions to follow. As part of this, College pupils designed a world-first outdoor gym using recycled plastics, which it is hoped will become part of the new shoreline development in Eastbourne.
- Eastbourne College staff are working with the OCR examination board to help them develop a new Natural History GCSE. Eastbourne College aims to be one of the first schools to run the new Natural History GCSE in 2025.
- Pupils from Eastbourne College and local schools were involved in sending Birds2BHeard to Cop26. Over a thousand messages from pupils in the Eastbourne area were sent to the world’s leaders expressing their hopes to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. A follow up environment symposium for the local schools was recently hosted by Eastbourne College.
- Hosting an online international environment conference called Making Natural History during covid lockdown, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Eastbourne hosting a young United Nations conference in 1995 looking at environmental issues.
Through a sustainability committee which liaises more widely with staff and pupils around the College and the adoption of a charity wide environmental policy last year, Eastbourne College is determined to do what it can to reduce its carbon emissions and recycle wherever possible.
The following are just a few more of Eastbourne College’s ongoing initiatives:
- Focusing on lowering our emissions (not always easy on our Victorian site)
- Purchasing electric and hybrid vehicles
- The roll out of LED lighting across the school
- Reducing paper procurement (by 4 tonnes since 2018/19 to 2020/21
- A weekly beach clean which is run as part of the College’s Service at School programme
- Reducing food waste with the College’s caterers
- A weekly recycling service carried out by pupil volunteers in and around the College
- A regular eco group meeting with catering, facilities and Houses to discuss recycling methods and prevention of energy waste
