We have just been informed that we have been awarded the Eco Schools Silver Award.

Well done to all those pupils involved with the Eco Club for their hard work this year. It has really paid off.

We can start working towards the Green Flag which we can hopefully get next year.

Our school resource librarian has drawn my attention to this interesting article reported on the BBC website. An academic from Harvard University in the States has claimed that just two searches on Google produces a similar volume of Carbon Dioxide emissions as boiling a kettle.

Google have denied these claims and said that the figures are far too high. They have also stated their green intentions. A spokesman for them said “In 2007, we co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. This non-profit consortium is committed to cutting the energy consumed by computers in half by 2010 and so reducing global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. That’s a lot of kettles.”

It is an interesting article, well worth a read.

The Eco Club has launched its Recycool Appeal and is asking pupils, staff, parents and local businesses to bring in their old mobile phones and empty printer cartridges. This will help raise money for the school and also for charity.

Mobile phones and printer cartridges contain toxic substances, which, if they are dumped in landfill, can leak into the surrounding soil and pollute the earth. As well as preventing pollution, recycling old mobiles can help developing countries. many developing nations do not have a comprehensive landline infrastructure. As a result, mobile phones may be the only way of communicating over a distance. Recycool send old mobiles to these countries to help improve their communication.

You can support our Recycool Appeal by donating your own empty printer cartridges, old mobile phones and PDAs. There are collecting boxes for these items in the entrance area to the School.

We have set some pretty big targets so if you have an old mobile sitting in a drawer then please bring it in.

Members of the Eco Club with Mr Kerr at the launch of the appeal.

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The Eco-Club is trying to find out local community views on litter. An online survey has been developed. We would be grateful if you could spend two minutes to complete the short survey.
Click Here to take survey

The S1-S3 anti-litter poster competition has now closed and the Eco-Club has judged all of the entries. The standard was very high with some terrific artistic efforts and good ideas about preventing litter. The three winners are Sian Kelly, Ciara Lawwell and John Kinney. Congratulations to them. They will receive their prizes in the next assembly. Their great posters will be displayed around the school. You can see them here.

Found a link to Wordle on Mr O’D’s blog. It creates a word cloud of key words. Here is one created from the Eco Club news that will appear in the next School newsletter. It looks cool!

© 2008 Jonathan Feinberg subscribe

Lots has happened since our last post on Blackle.com

Blackle.com may not save any energy at all and could actually use more energy than the traditional white Google page. Thanks to Mark for his comment highlighting this.
This link gives a quick insight into the situation.

Go Greener Day is this Sunday 5th October from 12pm at Eastwood Park Theatre and Carmichael Hall. This day is to promote what you can do to tackle climate change in your area. There will be various information stalls and competitions, the science centre are providing kids activities, talks on how you can do your bit from River City’s Heather and others, music and drama and a farmers market with a chocolate fountain! And the Eco-Club will be there!! Should be a good day for all the family, spread the word.

The entries for the S1-S3 anti-litter poster competition have been collected and are to be judged very soon. Winners to be announced. While we are talking about litter, some of the Eco-Club have been out and about in the local community and have photographed the litter that is left behind by our pupils at lunchtimes. The photos are going to be used in assemblies and the Club may even produce a short video from them using animoto.

Miss Durning’s S2 Artists have also been working on a new sign for the EcoClub notice board in the forum. So far it is looking good and we are excited about seeing the finished article.

The hessian sacks for collecting paper waste to be recycled have now been put into all staff bases and the English and Maths class rooms. They will be going into other classrooms very soon.

Work on the lauch of the Recycool initiative is coming along as well and it will hopefully launch after the October holiday. Check back for more later.

It is hard work trying to be kinder to the environment but let’s hope it is worth it in the long run!

Miss McGill has just inroduced me to this interesting search engine that is powered by Google.
http://www.blackle.com/

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search and saves energy because the screen is predominantly black.

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

Why don’t you set Blackle as your home page and each time you load your Internet browser you will save a little energy. Remember every bit counts!

The Eco Club is running a poster competition for pupils in S1 to S3. The challenge is to produce an anti-litter poster that will encourage our school pupils to think before they litter.

Posters can be hand drawn or produced on a computer. The deadline for entries is Thursday 25 September and they should be handed into Mr Kerr in the Biology base. (Make sure you put your name and year on the back!!!).

There are prizes to be won and winners will have their poster displayed around the school and on the plasma TVs.

Come on then, get designing that poster!!! 13 days to get your entry handed in!

This is a terrific presentation about water in the World. Mr O’Donnell’s S1 class are using it at the minute to see how they can save water. It is definitely worth a look.