Green Flags awarded to 19 eco friendly Laois schools

No less than 19 Laois schools have just won Green Flag national awards for their great work to protect the environment.

Green-Schools Ireland͛'s leading environmental management and award programme, is celebrating 25 years working with primary and secondary schools across the country.

Representatives from the 19 Laois schools received their awards in Athlone on May 24, among a host of ceremonies all over Ireland for 747 schools during May.

The awards day celebrated all the hard work by students, teachers and the wider school community put into achieving their
Green Flag.

Laois County Council hired a coach so that the Laois students and Green-Schools coordinators could travel to Athlone in the most environmentally friendly way. See this great photo below of the group with their newly awarded flags.

Newcomers to the Green-Schools initiative, Gaelscoil an tSlí Dála, Portlaoise were awarded the first flag of the programme, Litter and Waste.

Schools on this theme reduce the amount of general waste sent to landfill, take part in community clean ups and initiatives like Neat Streets, LitterLess, National Spring Clean, Picker Pals and Bin it Roadshows.

Holy Family Senior School, Portlaoise, Mountmellick Youthreach and Portlaoise College were all awarded their Water flag for water conservation and clean water campaigns.

The most awarded flag in Laois this year was for the Travel flag - Paddock NS in Mountrath, Scoil Naomh Abban in Crettyard, Scoil Phadraig Naofa in Mountmellick, St Fintan's BNS in Mountrath and St Fiacc's NS in Graiguecullen.

These schools encouraged walking, cycling, scooting, parking ‘n’ striding, getting the bus and carpooling to school. Across Ireland, schools participating in this theme experienced a decrease in car usage, 20% increase in walking and an 8.5% increase in cycling.

Below: Green-Schools Senior Travel Officer Lukasz Krzywon speaking at the awards ceremony.

Scoil Bhride in Bilboa was awarded the Biodiversity flag and nationally schools taking part in this theme planted an amazing 6,737 trees this year! As these trees grow, they will have lots of benefits, including offering homes and food to many different species, storing tons of carbon and providing opportunities for education and enjoyment for the school’s students. 

This year Biodiversity schools in Ireland also created other spaces and food sources for wildlife including 301 wildflower gardens, 216 leaf or log piles and 626 bird feeders.
 
Schools on Global Citizenship themes have been working with Green-Schools for at least 10 years and some as long as 25 years. This flag empowers students to be a global citizen.

Awarded Global Citizenship Litter and Waste were Cosby N.S in Stradbally, Rushall NS in Portlaoise and St Fergal's College in Rathdowney.

These schools achieved waste reductions, increased knowledge about where our food originates, Fairtrade, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and social justice - “Leave no one behind”.

Scoil Chomhghain Naofa in Killeshin and Scoil Mhuire in Wolfhill were awarded Global Citizenship Energy and have, despite all the problems due to covid requirements for ventilation in the classrooms, managed to keep their energy consumption steady. They also learnt about Climate Change and actions to help reduce it.

Awarded Global Citizenship Marine Environment were Gaelscoil Phortlaoise, Scoil Bhride NS in Portlaoise, and Camross NS.

They had all worked hard at creating awareness about the marine environment and the role we have to play inland in Laois of ensuring our waste does not enter our waterways and end up in ours seas. 

Every school on this marine environment theme was involved in a litter clean up on their school grounds. These clean ups varied from daily, weekly, monthly etc. The litter picks ups in some schools extended into the local community areas, parks, rivers and canals. 

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St Joseph's GNS Mountmellick was awarded the newest Green-Schools flag, for Global Citizenship Food and Biodiversity.

On average, schools working on this theme grow 10 food crops with an incredible 36 different crops in total being grown. Despite the lovely variety it was the dependable potato that was the most popular with 96% of schools choosing to plant it.

Schools also made a big impact on reducing food miles, waste and packaging by cooking with their produce. Schools tried out over 40 different recipes with the top three being Strawberry Salad, Carrot Sticks with Herb Dip and Vegetable Soup.