The British School, Al Kubairat update

By The British School Al Khubairat

Posted on November 13th, 2019.

BSAK Eco Committee

Since last year we:

Created a whole school Eco Committee.
Appointed Eco Ambassadors to drive change and share our successes with their year groups and the wider BSAK/UAE community. Eco Ambassadors are students in years 3-13 and adult representatives in Nursery-year 2.
Created a twitter account to share all the great stuff we do: @BSAKeco
Completed an Environmental Review of the school.
Created an Action Plan and Budget.
Agreed a whole school plan which will focus on Marine Life, School Grounds and Waste with a view to achieving our Eco Schools Bronze Award by the end of the academic year.
Completed Nurdle Hunts on Saadiyat Beach with NYUAD and Park Hyatt. On one visit over 23000 nurdles collected in 45 minutes.
Ran a stall at the International Fete and educated our BSAK community by sharing information about what we’ve found out so far about our environment.
Met with the architects designing the new primary dining hall to discuss how the build can be eco-friendly. It has since been built.Worked with the Global Leaders to successfully agree that there will be a water filtration unit in the new primary dining hall meaning no plastic water barrels.
Took part in the Emirates Environmental Group initiative to collect and recycle aluminum drinks cans, glass bottles, PET 1 and 2 plastic and paper/card.
Removed all single use plastic cups from the school premises in October 2018.
Secondary Eco Ambassadors met with manager of Food Nation to discuss the use of excessive packaging – bamboo cutlery is now used instead of plastic and all packaging is reduced plastic with a view to improving this further.
Removal of all plastic cutlery in secondary staff room and replaced with metal cutlery.
Led a primary Eco House competition. This involved parents, students and staff from our community tweeting their eco-friendly suggestions.
Removed one time use plastic cups and are encouraging the use of reusable water bottles around the community.
Eco Ambassadors delivered an assembly to years 7-13 explaining the issues with single-use plastic and encouraging everyone to carry a water bottle.
Notice board created in primary sharing all our wonderful achievements with our community.
Took part in the EEG initiative to collect aluminium cans. Pledged to collect a minimum amount of glass, paper, plastic and aluminium for EEG initiative.
Global Leaders assembly regarding Earth Hour. Took part in Earth Hour across the school.
90 bags of clothes recycled for the Red Cross to distribute to Syrian refugees.
Completed the Uselessutensils campaign with AZRAQ. Azraq presentation – January 2020.
Zero Waste talk – 8.10.19. Delivered to Eco Ambassadors across primary and secondary.
Flip The Switch campaign to reduce electricity consumption.
Presentation by Sarah from DGrade Dubai on Simply Bottles recycling campaign.
Initiative adopted in primary (Nov 2019) with a view to secondary starting in January 2020.
2019-2020 focus on sustainability and reducing consumption – Flip the Switch and Simply Bottles recycling campaign.
Eco Trip to plant native trees on Saadiyat Golf Course – 5.12.19.
Eco Week in January 2020.
Powerpoints sent out to tutor groups for all students to create an Eco-Resolution in January.
Year 5 pupils have been recycling batteries.
Maths department have introduced annual lessons to teach KS3 pupils how to plot graphs using data from our annual carbon dioxide emissions, to show the magnitude of this problem.
Busy Bees Bus visited us. Pupils were able to recognise the importance of conservation of animals, and specifically, how to protect bee’s habitats.
Planning to have a plastic free national day (Dec 2019), encouraging students to bring in their own plates and utensils as an alternative to one time use plastics.
Multiple secondary ambassadors have designed posters to raise awareness about environmental issues.
Year 9 English lessons have made the year group think about what an effective Eco-Code for the school would be. They then split into groups and each created one.
Campaign about reducing BSAK’s paper consumption. We used 61,471 less pieces of paper this September compared to last year.
Encouraged a local restaurant to replace their plastic ice cream spoons with bamboo ones.