Information

Sustainable Schools - a global dimension

Sustainable development is a way of thinking about how we organise our lives, our education and our work  so that we don’t destroy our most precious resource, the planet.

Sustainable development means inspiring people in all parts of the world to find solutions that improve their quality of life without storing up problems for the future, or having an unfair impact on other people’s lives. It is much more than recycling bottles or giving money to charity. It is about thinking and working in a profoundly different way.

If we want to be a sustainable school we must commit to caring for people and the environment.  But sustainable development isn’t just about the environment – and it isn’t something we can achieve in isolation.  There is a global dimension to every aspect of our lives and communities. The air we breathe, the food we eat and the clothes we wear link us to people, environments and economies all over the world.

You can contribute to the way GCA is trying to care more for the environment and people all over the world by sharing ideas as to how we can save energy, reduce waste, buy locally-produced food and so on.  Use the contacts page on this site to tell us what you’re doing or give us some tips.  Alternatively, tell Ms Henry your ideas.  We’ll publish all of them here. 

Tips of the week

Did you know that mobile phones contain small amounts of precious metals?  If we collected these from all the redundant phones in the UK and Ireland, we’d have:   gold worth around £14 million, palladium worth over £8 million, silver worth over £1 million and copper worth around 16K.  So, if you have an old phone sitting around in a drawer, don’t let it stay there, take it down to Budgen’s in Crouch End where they’ll pass it on for recycling all those precious metals.

and ....

Reduce energy use and save on electricity bills by making sure you don’t leave your mobile charger on overnight.  95% of the energy used by the UK’s mobile phone chargers is wasted energy. Only 5% is actually used to charge phones, the rest is used when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket.  That’s over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplugged our chargers after use. Amazingly, this is the equivalent of almost 500 football pitches’ worth of forest every year.

The same goes for all appliances.  Leaving televisions, DVDs and computers on standby, rather than switching them off, emits four million tonnes of CO2 and wastes £740m a year across the country.  So tell your parents to switch off when not in use.