Schools for Sustainability

Many Schools around Australia are currently addressing the sustainability challenge in a variety of ways. There are a number of areas within the school environment to impact on, most importantly the students and teachers and secondly, the schools’ own built environment. The following initiatives outline three successful models of sustainability the Dusseldorp Skills Forum have investigated.

AuSSI
http://www.environment.gov.au/education/aussi/index.html

The Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI) is a partnership of the Australian Government, the States and Territories that aims to support schools and their communities to become sustainable.

The AuSSI involves participants in a whole-of-school approach, to explore through real-life learning experiences, improvements in a school’s management of resources and facilities including energy, waste, water, biodiversity, landscape design, products and materials. It also addresses associated social and financial issues.

With the support from AuSSI partners, schools are offered best practice and quality curriculum support, audit tools to manage resources, ideas for on-ground projects and ways to involve the local community and encourage a shift in the broader community towards more sustainable practices and processes.

More than 2000 schools are now participating in the AuSSI, and participating schools have reported reductions in waste collection of up to 80%, reductions in water consumption of up to 60%, and savings on energy consumption of 20% with commensurate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Dott07
http://www.dott07.com/go/school/eco-design-challenge/

Dott 07 (Designs of the time 2007) was a year of community projects, events and exhibitions based in North East England, exploring what life in a sustainable region could be like – and how design could help us get there. A part of this, the Eco Design Challenge was designed to tie in with the UK National Curriculum and encouraged Year 8 students across the North East of England to channel their creativity into redesigning parts of their schools, with the objective of reducing their ecological and carbon footprints. The process involved over fifteen thousand students and teachers from the region designing sustainable alternatives to some of the systems currently operating in their schools.

Students were asked to identify where problems were in their school, by doing an ecological and carbon footprint of their school. To establish the footprint of their school the students had to collect information such as journey to and from school, energy in the classroom, energy use in the school, school meals, water use and waste disposal.

The students went on to use this data as a basis for a design brief that they developed and submitted to Dott 07 in hope of making it through to the next round. The challenge process introduced students to how designers need to think and operate to create a sustainable future, and also introduces the concept of sustainable design.

Twenty schools were shortlisted and went on to work with professional designers to help develop their design briefs. Ideas ranged from small products, to huge buildings or environments, and even futuristic systems and services. The results were showcased at the Dott 07 Festival (that brought together the results of the projects and enabled all those involved to share experiences and plan what to do next) and the winners were announced at the Creative Community Awards in October 2007.

Eco Schools
http://www.eco-schools.org.uk/

Eco-Schools is an international award programme that guides schools on their sustainable journey, providing a framework to help embed these principles into the heart of school life.

Eco-Schools is one of five environmental education programmes run internationally by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE). There are 40 countries around the world that run the Eco-Schools programme, linking more than 40,000 schools – from the UK to France, from Morocco to South Africa.

A big attraction of Eco-Schools is that it is easy to connect with other Eco-Schools across the world to explore ways of working together on environmental issues using the on-line network system they have built.

The Eco-Schools programme makes tackling sustainable issues manageable and easy for all schools, whether they are children’s centres, nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools or schools with special status.

Once registered, schools follow a simple seven-step process which helps them to address a variety of environmental themes, ranging from litter and waste to healthy living and biodiversity.

Children are the driving force behind Eco-Schools – they lead the eco-committee and help carry out an audit to assess the environmental performance of their school. Through consultation with the rest of the school and the wider community it is the pupils that decide which environmental themes they want to address and how they are going to do it. Measuring and monitoring is an integral part of the Eco-Schools programme, providing schools with all the evidence they need to really shout about their environmental success.

Schools work towards gaining one of three awards – Bronze, Silver and the prestigious Green Flag award, which symbolises excellence in the field of environmental activity.