Dear Principal Ainsworth,                                                                         
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I write to you today to draw your attention to improvements I think would make Callington Community College a more environmentally friendly school and staff and pupils more environmentally aware and responsible.
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I was pleased to read in issue 34 of ‘The Voice’ Callington Community College is now part of the green charter for schools initiative and are committed to promoting environmental awareness. I have also been encouraged by initiatives like Oceans Day, but I am concerned these measures do not go far enough.
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As I’m sure you are aware, our planet is facing a climate emergency. 67,000 acres of rainforest is destroyed every day ¹. Over 8 million metric tons of plastic are thrown into the ocean annually ². Of those, more than 236,000 tons are microplastics ³. It is thought 10,000 species go extinct each year ⁴ with thousands more listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature ⁵ as threatened with extinction or critically endangered. I feel the school currently contributes enormously to the ever growing environmental problems and have identified key areas I feel we should be taking more direct action.
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1. Excessive Plastic Consumption. Almost all the plastic used in the school is single use with little effort being made to reduce the use of items such as plastic cutlery in the canteen, drinks bottles in vending machines and pens. Did you know Plastics kills approximately 100,000 sea creatures and 1 million sea birds each year? ⁶
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2. Recycling. There were not enough recycling bins around the property up until recently. I’ve noticed that now the awareness of plastic and recycling has been raised you have now added a few bins, but there is no signs. Did you know many items such as crisp packets, sweet and biscuit wrappers can be recycled through Terracycle allowing charities such as Kicks Count ⁷ who operate local collections to financially benefit from packaging which is not currently recycled through kerbside collections? I think it would be great if our school rubbish could raise funds for charity.
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3. Excessive energy consumption. I have noticed lights, computer monitors and whiteboards being left on in empty class rooms. The school could also save money of utility bills as well as reducing carbon footprint just by turning electrical goods off when not in use.
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4. General recycling. I am worried the school is not doing enough to recycle common materials such as paper and card. Some classrooms have no provisions to recycle these products and I am concerned they are being unnecessarily disposed of in general waste.
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We are taught if we try, we can achieve anything. We can all do something to help our planet and our school could be leading the way in encouraging staff and pupils to make “refuse, reduce, re-use, recycle, repair, re-gift, recover and re-cycle” commonplace.
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I would like to suggest the school forms a student environment committee (which I would like to be part of) to share and implement ideas to make our school more environmentally friendly. We could even start by designing posters and leaflets to make sure everyone uses the recycling bins!
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I hope you will consider my points and then we can all start to make a difference.
[1] Rainforest alliance (2019) https://bit.ly/2klcmH9 
[2] Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into the Ocean (2015) https://bit.ly/33BqXjN
[3] A global inventory of small floating plastic debris (2015) https://bit.ly/2kEIE0c
[4] World Wildlife Fund (2019) https://bit.ly/2IXm8ty
[5] IUCN https://bit.ly/2TRpCkn
[6] Ocean Crusaders (2019) https://bit.ly/1LSU9CX
[7] Kicks Count https://www.kickscount.org.uk/