Most of the time I work in IT at Redhill (or that’s what I’m led to believe) but for 2 days a year I get to do something completely different – encouraging primary school age children to take better care of the world they live in. I was privileged to be able to meet students from my former primary school and present them with a prize from Total for the work they are actively doing in their school garden and environment. Then in another part of Dorset meet young children who have innovated, produced and sold environmental products in an entrepreneurial way. The week before that, I was at London Zoo with a number of celebrities celebrating outstanding environmental work done by children from across the country.
You may not know this but TGP has been sponsoring a corporate social responsibility initiative for more than 10 years, working with other Total organisations in the UK and the Young People’s Trust for the Environment to encourage environmental awareness through what was called the Total Green School Awards, now the Better Energy School Awards.
Every year school children and clubs send in projects that show how they have been thinking about the environment or actively improving it. The finalists from each region of the country get £1000 for the school, a trophy and an invitation to the final at London Zoo. The overall winner is announced at this low key but exciting event and receives £5000. The tension is palpable as the envelope is opened and, as is the custom, all the celebs and guests shout out the name of the winning school.
However, the thing that really surprises us each year (should it surprise us?) is that the kids really get it – they understand the issues and believe what needs to be done far more than we do. This year it is obvious what an impression the BBC Blue Planet 2 series has had and how single use plastic is now enemy no.1. The winning school this year from Hannover Street in Aberdeen (which coincidentally has good links with Total UK staff) was a deserving winner as they researched and campaigned against single use plastics by comparing the enormity of the task to ‘pigs might fly’. So they made paper mache pigs with wings, wrote pledges on them and set about Aberdeen asking people to pledge something to reduce plastic use – removing plastic straws from one café for example with the pig and its pledge left proudly on the counter. One pig was sent to their MP and she mentioned the children’s scheme in Parliament. One was sent to Sir David Attenborough and they were one of the few schools that had entered the competition and written to him to get a reply!
Another runner up that caught my eye was a group that had written some code on a Raspberry Pi computer and linked it to a homemade traffic light system and handheld scanner. They had researched the journey of a T-Shirt and the number of miles it travels. For each garment they had created a barcode so that when scanned it would give the ‘buyer’ info about how ethically sound it was. They found that a typical T shirt can cover 30000 miles in production and the cotton taking 2700 litres of water to manufacture. Apparently, the fashion industry is the second biggest polluter in the world.
The main event is run by Peter Littlewood from the YPTE, their trustees and Total employees – Lesley Weatherall made her debut speech this year. Total also provides the judges for the event– Charlotte Morris and I have been privileged to be on the panel for a number of years, sifting through the work that is submitted by schools representing over 21000 children this year. And many others of you over the years have also been involved in this and also as ambassadors. The celebs who turn up really make it special and YPTE boasts a good selection of presidents who support it including Dermot O’Leary who, if he can’t make it, will send a video message, as well as Naomi Wilkinson from CBBC who the children are familiar with (and anyone who used to have kids that watched Milkshake!)
Not all the schools make it to the grand final but there are other, smaller runners up prizes and we have made special presentations to schools – usually in school assembly. The first one I did with Martin Peters (remember him?) the headmistress set two child sized chairs out in front of the whole school for us to sit on and I had to think very quickly about what we were going to say as we were not expecting to make any speeches – now it’s easier and we have made a number of presentations to Turner’s Hill School near Gatwick who consistently generate good projects. This school was an early adopter of solar panels and wind turbines and they bring analysis of the energy generated into their curriculum.
The Better Energy School Awards are back later this year starting in the new term in September so if you know of any primary school age children please tell their teachers about it – the top prizes are good and there are some for runners up too. The projects can be presentations of the good work that they are already doing actively, creatively or researching on environmental and energy related topics. There are also good lesson plans on the YPTE website that are government approved which will help them too.
You can read more about the 2019 awards at https://betterenergyschoolawards.org.uk/
