Eco Schools Green Flag

This year, Eco-Schools was able to obtain the green flag certification by the FEE(Foundation for Environmental Education) for the school. Thereby making OSC the first Eco-School in Sri Lanka. The final leg of the certification was a meeting with 3 representatives from the FEE where we presented to them what we had done in the school to combat waste, climate change and help with the biodiversity of the campus.

 

Ways we did this included the garden bed project, the biogas plant and such which required collaboration from other service groups like Housing & Habitat and Recycling & Sustainability too.

On my part, I presented how we engaged with climate change. Specifically the Eco code poster which was put in classrooms to suggest ways we can reduce our energy consumption in classes. Within developing our eco code poster, the challenge we faced was tailoring it to accommodate different classrooms, for example the english classrooms had better airflow therefore we were able to use fans to a greater extent than for example the science labs. Thus, we came to a compromise by restricting AC usage to certain times.

 

Overall, the whole project has taught me how collaboration can go a long way, especially within a community like OSC. The whole process was very intricate and took a long time to achieve, however it was a great experience throughout my DP life.

 

Learning Objectives:

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

The certification process took over two years to obtain and took hard work and dedication from many different people over the years to get to this point. Personally, I was involved every Thursday and through meetings during lunchtime to aid in the certification.

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

The certification required various different services projects within the OSC community to work together. For example, with the garden beds, Eco-Schools was involved in the planning with the school architects while Housing & Habitat aided in building the beds during the weekends.

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

I believe all of us directly engaged with issues of globalal significance as we attempted to make our school environment more sustainable and environmentally friendly.