On 8th December 2023, students from 6 local secondary schools came together for the Student Climate Summit to share their research on different sustainability themes and decide on priorities and a joint campaign to work on throughout 2024. Through a democratic process, they chose to focus on Consumption & Waste, a theme that cuts across many other themes and includes plastic water bottles, food packaging and food waste at school. You can find out more here. Council officers present at the event commented on how powerful, professional and efficient the students were running this event.
At the same event, headteachers or senior leaders from the 6 schools made bold pledges to reduce school carbon emissions:
- to stop the use of single use plastics in our schools
- to promote the development of a more plant based menu offer and a significant reduction in food waste
- to reduce our carbon emissions from energy use by 20%
- to reduce our water use by 20%
- to increase areas of the school campus which encourage biodiversity by an additional 10% of overall campus size
- to have at least 70-100 clearly identified student climate ambassadors
We’ll be working with school over the next year to help them realise these ambitions.
