Blogs and News - St George's School, Edinburgh

On Friday 22nd of April, it was Earth Day. We chose to have our Lower School Eco Day on the same date. Everyone dressed in their own clothes, with lots of green outfits on display! The Primary 6s had a day of fun eco activities. In music, we sang our school eco song, ‘Greener’ and then we had 3 class activities.

We did some Earth Day craft, using washable pens on filter paper to create our planet Earth. We then used black paper to make hand cut-outs to hold our Earth, showing how we want to protect our planet.

We loved pond dipping and had great fun finding and investigating pond leeches, water beetles, fresh-water shrimp and pond snails. We used nets to fish for creatures and tubs, trays and magnifying glasses to take a closer look. At first, we were a bit squeamish about the leeches but after we’d named a few, some people were quite sorry to let them go back into the pond!

Then we learned about the story of poor Freddie the Fish. We joined Freddie on his journey down river, adding into his environment all the pollutants that got washed, blown or chucked into his river. As we added ‘fertiliser’, ‘displaced soil’, ‘animal waste’, ‘acid rain’, ‘litter’, ‘winter salt’, ‘factory toxins’ and ‘oil’ into the water, we saw that Freddie was finding it harder and harder to swim and breathe. In the end, Freddie took his last breath.

It was a very sad tale, but we understood that this is the harsh reality for many fish and other wildlife that are being affected by our actions – or indeed, inactions.
To start making an immediate difference, we spent the afternoon on a ‘Literati’ walk. This was also what the Remove and L4 groups did in their PSE sessions. We watched Jeff Kirschner’s Literati Clip, explaining the methodology (Literati Clip) and then set off, armed with bin bags, gloves and litter pickers, kindly loaned from the Water of Leith rangers. Each Remove and Lower 4 class had a different area to target, including the Cycle Track, the Water of Leith walkway, our surrounding streets and our own school grounds. The Primary 6s tackled Roseburn Park. In total, we gathered 10 bin bags of rubbish, some of them very full! We discovered that the main litter items were cigarette butts, glass and plastic bottle tops – and there was also a lot of dog poo, bagged up but dumped. We were quite appalled at that!

 We hope that Eco Day and the Literati Walks has made everyone more aware of the detrimental impact humans are making on the planet and how we can all do our bit to help change that. Here is what some of the students thought:

• I enjoyed helping the community and going outside
• I enjoyed taking pictures of others and cleaning the environment and making it a better place.
• I liked using the litter pickers and had no idea how many cigarettes had been dumped there.
• I enjoyed litter picking and hope we do it more often.
• I liked knowing we helped the community.
• It was good fun and there are now less cigarettes on the pavement.
• It was a really great experience and we all worked together as a team.

We also managed to raise £159.29 which will go towards our Lower School Eco Projects. Many thanks to all the students and staff involved to make it a fun and successful event.