Green Schools in Borris College - A Student's Perspective
This year, students from Borris College were involved in a school's green school's initiative, thanks to the dedication and encouragement from our mentors, Ms. Johnston and Ms. Carbajo.
Our first green schools meeting took place at the start of September, where we outlined our plans and goals for the year and elected our committee - Adam, Sean, Fiachra, Aine and Kate - serving as Joint Chairperson, Treasurer, Public Relations Officer and Secretary, respectively.
Our first event took place a couple of weeks later, with the river clean-up where we picked up litter and tidied the area surrounding our local river. Next, we planted trees for National Tree Day on the 3rd of October. Following this, we got invited to Borris Library for a workshop by the SEAI and Carlow Climate Action Week program on the 14th. For our final event before mid-term, we were lucky enough to visit a farm in our locality to learn about sustainable agriculture in our community.
We also had a workshop at the start of December where we built planters, blackboards and bird feeders with the help of the dedicated Borris men's shed, to promote biodiversity in our school.
Throughout the year we also advertised our Tesco Blue Token fundraiser in Tesco in Carlow.
We also held a biodiversity art competition. After more weekly meetings, surveys and keeping our green schools notice board up to date, it was finally time for us to prepare for our Biodiversity Flag review. It took place at the end of February; we showed our judge the work we had been doing around the school and in the broader community. She was very impressed with an activity the TYs had organised earlier in the year - a ‘sort the rubbish game’ for our junior years to raise awareness for recycling and rubbish management in our school. It was very successful, and everyone learned something new, like how the wrappers from O'Shea's rolls are compostable!
We recently got word that our review went very well, and three members of team were invited to Kilkenny to receive our Biodiversity flag!
Overall, it was great to see the profound effort and involvement in the community from all of the members of the green schools' team. Every one of us contributed greatly and should be very proud of this achievement.
Student: Kate Long