The Green School

From Kindergarten to college, creating a sustainable learning environment takes on a communicty approach at Enviroschools.

Grass roots

The Enviroschools movement started in 1993 when three Waikato schools trialled the idea of putting environmental education into the real life of the school rather than teaching it simply as a curriculum topic. The programme really got rolling in 1997 when the Hamilton City Council hired Heidi Mardon, an architect who focused on sustainable buildings and who had a penchant for teaching, as the programme director. Together with key teachers in the region, she developed a framework and process that took the concept of environmental education and turned it into activities that entire school communities could take part in. The aim was to get kids involved with identifying issues, figuring out what to do about them and then designing, planning and carrying out the tasks. What makes the Enviroschool concept special, says Heidi, is that instead of just sending the kids out to plant trees, it empowers them to make decisions about sustainability and how their school can achieve it. The National Enviroschools office opened in 2003 and today 544 schools across New Zealand (20 percent of the total) ranging between deciles one and 10 and including early childhood through to college are enrolled.

Vision map

Creating a vision map illustrates where the school is environmentally, where it wants to go and what needs to happen to get it there. It’s a long-term commitment so the school also develops monitoring and maintenance plans. National advisers provide training for regional facilitators who help local schools. Facilitators are, typically, employed by regional councils.

Living landscapes

Each of the six classrooms at New Plymouth’s Moturoa School has a vegetable garden and students plant seeds, tend crops, harvest and cook veges. Last year the school won a grant from the WWF to plant an orchard and the soil is now ready for the first fruit trees. Lunch waste feeds the worm farm and shredded paper is added to the compost bin.

The 60 students at Kimbolton School in rural Manawatu have taken on Forest Road Bush Reserve, a local scenic reserve where the native forest was being overtaken by weeds. Along with community members and arborists, they cleared out invasive sycamores and weeds and planted natives they had grown from eco-sourced seeds. Students also grow native grasses that DoC uses for dune stabilization at Tangimoana and are in the process of expanding their growing unit so it can provide rata seedlings to plant in the Manawatu Gorge.

Ecological buildings

When students at Hukanui School in the Waikato found themselves shuffling from room to room for environmental education, they identified the need for a designated space. Exploring the idea of a purpose-built classroom gave the opportunity to learn about sustainable building design and when students took a presentation to the Board of Trustees they were granted approval to contact an architect. It was the first time Antanas Procuta had had clients who ranged in age from nine to 11 and he encouraged them to think about design options and provided guidance. The students are learning the realities of construction costs and material selection guidelines and have developed a fund-raising team from the school and community. The school expects to have secured sufficient funding and resource consent by the end of 2008; building is expected to begin in 2009.

Healthy water

In 2003, Pukehou School in Hawke’s Bay adopted a portion of the Pekapeka swamp and, working in collaboration with the regional council, students are transforming it back into native wetlands. Invasive weeds have been removed,  seedlings have been planted and weed mats put in place. With community help, an old bus shelter has been turned into a nursery for replacement trees and plants.

Keeping water healthy is only one effect of creating eco-friendly cleaning products, a project of students at Dunedin’s Port Chalmers School. The kids are researching which chemical cleaners are being used and how they could be replaced with handmade environmentally safe ones. 

Zero waste

St John’s Hill School in Wanganui started down the Enviroschools road five years ago with a desire to achieve zero waste. Following a major rubbish audit, recyclables are now sent to the local depot and food scraps are fed to the worm farm and the school’s dozen hens. Eggs are sold and compost from the birds is applied to vegetable gardens. Harvests are sent to community groups; chickens are replaced yearly with day-old chicks that students rear (the retiring hens are adopted out – none has met a grisly end).

Each week, students from the “waste buster” group at Limehills School (about half an hour north of Invercargill) collect paper that has been used on both sides and send it through the shredder. Part of this feeds the worm farm, part is made into paper bricks for home-fire use and the rest is recycled back into paper.

Precious energy

In late 2006, 12 photovoltaic solar panels were installed at Northcote College in Auckland as part of Genesis Energy’s Schoolgen programme. Students attended workshops to learn the science behind solar panels as well as the economic and environmental cost and benefits of them. Reducing energy use by 15 percent is the target for the college and students determined that, while the panels produce electricity, changes in behaviour could impact the school’s energy use significantly. Over school holidays, they conducted an audit of energy use and found more than 280 appliances left on, including a classroom full of computers and nine empty refrigerators. It was a wake-up call for everyone, says North Shore facilitator Monique Zwaan. The students are focused on energy and the college is taking part in a passive solar wall trial with BRANZ. The school’s energy action team helped to identify a classroom to modify with the construction of the wall and will monitor the effectiveness of this and correlate it with data gathered from the school’s weather station. Additionally, students have researched alternatives to the aging coal-fired furnace, are investigating carbon credits and trading, have conducted an energy-focused workshop at the 2007 Enviroschools Youth Jam and have built a solar-powered car.