Sustainability at Westbury

We're passionate about the environment at Westbury on Trym CE Academy and are committed to doing all we can to educate young people about climate change and take positive steps towards becoming net zero carbon.

Let's Go Zero

We’ve taken the Let’s Go Zero pledge, declaring our aim to become zero carbon by 2030. We’re joining schools across the UK in this national campaign to show the overwhelming support for zero carbon schools, and inviting government and local councils to work with us to reach this goal.

We know that schools can be the trailblazers for their community, responding to young people’s calls for action. In fact, they can inspire whole communities to tackle the climate crisis. In the coming pivotal ‘climate decade,’ we will be part of Let’s Go Zero’s national network of schools and sustainability, sharing information about how to reach zero carbon, and working with local councils and government to make it happen.

We’re committing to cut carbon in a number of key areas and, working together with the Eco Committee and Climate Action Advisors, have begun the process of calculating our carbon footprint. We are finalising our Action Plan so that we can start to reduce our carbon footprint and hopefully become a zero carbon school by 2030... at the latest!

By joining the Let’s Go Zero campaign we’re taking a positive step on a local level to help combat the climate issues we all face globally. It sends a strong message to our whole school and community that together we can safeguard our planet for future generations.

Find out more about the Let’s Go Zero campaign here: https://letsgozero.org/

Other things we're doing to support the environment

We have a well-established Eco Committee (Warriors!) that work hard to generate and implement new ideas to lower our carbon footprint and improve biodiversity. We are focussed on long-term environmental initiatives because we know the impact they have on changing habits and mindsets. We are very proud that our children have a voice and can follow up their ideas with actions. See our Eco Committee page for more details.
We recently installed a further 40 solar panels, adding to the solar array we already had which comes with an online monitoring system that can be shared with the children to make energy saving come alive.
Whilst our solar arrays generate a significant amount of energy for school use, we still need to buy some energy but this is all on a green energy tariff.
Our lights use PIRs to automatically turn themselves off and we're in the process of changing our lights to LEDs.
We have a pupil-led Solar Polar Panda initiative to encourage pupils (and staff) to turn off lights, whiteboards and electronic devices.
We've adjusted our heating and water systems to optimise energy efficiency and use timers on charging trollies to reduce energy usage.
Water butts are used to collect rainfall to water our plants.
We have beautiful grounds with a large number of trees including 2 orchards, plus bird boxes and bug hotels to increase biodiversity.
We are working with SusWOT (Sustainable Westbury) to help promote the work that the local community volunteers do and encourage community engagement on sustainable initiatives.
We're also now part of the Carbon Zero Schools initiative that is being rolled out to our year 4 children, where they'll be developing and working on environmental projects.
We recycle as much as we can including all of our food waste, textiles, pens, batteries, electronic waste as well as plastics, paper/cardboard etc.
Our amazing PTA organise community second hand uniform events and co-ordinate re-use of unclaimed lost property and second hand uniform.
We consider the environment when purchasing new equipment or tendering for new suppliers e.g. our cleaning company only use environmentally friendly cleaning products and our caterers avoid any single use plastics in their service.
We even engage World leaders on climate issues when we get the opportunity - see our Action on Climate Change page!