Dear Friends,
We want to introduce our Eco-Schools activities at Midorigaoka Elementary school in Atsugi city.
We are members of Eco-Schools committee in our school, and leading Eco activities in our school. Our school is located in the middle of Kanagawa prefecture richly surrounded by the nature with the sea, mountain and lake. We also have a good transport connection into the capital city of Tokyo.
We named our activity “sparkle Eco-Schools activities”. We work to make our school clean and eco-friendly. Here are our 3 main activities.
First activity is to grow plants. Every class from every grade grows some kind of plants, so we see many greens in our school. Each member of eco committee come up with the idea of favorite flowers and we all give water and take care of those plants every day. Everyone cares about the plants which we have responsibility for.
In June, we asked everyone for donation to Green feather donation. We worked harder this year, and that helped to collect more donation than last year. With this fund, we will buy more seeds to grow more greens. Every year, we grow ‘Chrysanth’, Kiku in Japanese, with local people and sell them at local festival.Last year we did a project called “greens and flowers for the school ceremonies”. We grow flowers and greens for graduation ceremony for 6 graders who are graduating from elementary school and going to junior high school. Those flowers and greens are also used for the entrance ceremony for the new 1st graders.
Second activity is to set goals for eco-activities at each class level. Here are the examples of Eco-Goals; “play outside and save energy in a healthy way” “Wastes for separate and recycle” “No single rice left”. Whole school implements to switch off the class room lights when they are not in use. We also separate paper wastes to recycle. Our school is No.1 in Atsugi city of less amount of food waste from our lunch, which we students are all proud of. We are encouraging every student to finish every food served at school lunch, so that we don’t waste our foods.
Third activity is about eco activities of other school committees. Environment Committee members are working on regular clean-ups at school. They also initiate an action together with us called “1530”. On 15th and 30th of every month, they call for every student to clean up the school so no litter should be found at school especially on those 2 days. Other committee members are working on collecting pull-tops and bottle tops for recycle. Other committee members are also working on saving energy. We are glad to see that the eco actions are expanding within our school.
We hope you enjoyed our Eco-Schools story. Thank you very much!
