First Foundation COP Was Inspirational

The week began with an inspirational whole Foundation Assembly, where pupils heard from the schools’ Eco Teams and from guest speaker Yewande Akinola MBE, whose passion for engineering, sustainability, innovation and education was infectious.

On the Tuesday, 60 pupils from Crackley Hall School, Crescent School and Princethorpe College came together for a pupil mini-COP. The focus of the day was single-use plastics and in preparation, pupils had undertaken audits of single-use plastic in their schools.

In an action-packed day, the mini-COP attendees heard from some amazing guest speakers:

Marine Biologist, Dr Nova Mieszkowska, Reader in Earth, Ocean and Ecological Science at the University of Liverpool, who gave insights into the damage single-use plastics cause to marine habitats and of the increasing awareness of the dangers to humans of microplastics.  ​

Andrew Palmer, the Director of Global Affairs at British International Investment, who spoke about his experiences at four real COPs, representing the UK government.

Dr Kirsten Dollery - Senior Manager and Carbon Label Scheme Lead at The Carbon Trust, who explained to us how international treaties and standards come to fruition.

In cross-school groups, pupils discussed and debated environmental issues in and outside their school and came up with ideas as to how to make a difference. They drafted a series of ‘clauses’ for a Princethorpe Foundation Single-Use Plastics Treaty to take to the Senior Leadership of the schools:

Pupil COP Outcome Clauses:

• The Foundation shall invest in more recycling bins with clear and simple labelling and shall educate pupils to generate better habits.
• Teachers shall use refillable whiteboard pens; parents should supply their children with refillable pens. The Foundation shall provide specific bins for the recycling of pens.
• The Foundation shall reduce Single-Use Plastics from suppliers with an initial target of at least 10% each year for the next 10 years. The Foundation should use suppliers who can provide alternative options for single-use plastics.
• All Foundation pupils shall be encouraged to bring in recyclable water bottles and hot drink containers at all times.
• The Foundation shall have pupil rewards for sustainability, including da Vinci and Junior da Vinci awards.

The Foundation Executive Committee will ensure that these clauses will be enacted upon and also fed into our Annual Sustainability Report and Targets, which will be published next term.

The day ended with a team-building Artivism task that built a replica of the Foundation Tower using recycled plastic bottles, which were previously collected by all three schools. The activity was great fun as well as useful as the finished piece will now be used as a recycling bin to collect single-use plastics in our schools.

All pupils and staff who took place in the Foundation’s mini-COP were awarded an inaugural COP medal (made from recycled bottle tops and wool) as a memento of the day and to thank them all for their hard work.

Across the Foundation, teachers aligned lessons to the sustainability theme and there were a whole host of other sustainability activities, competitions and challenges.

The Foundation’s first COP week was inspirational, setting the focus and direction of the school’s ongoing sustainability actions.