Posted: Fri 17th Jan 2025

Castell Alun’s carbon footprint scheme set to spread across Wales

News and Info from Deeside, Flintshire, North Wales

Castell Alun High School in Hope has become the first in Flintshire to task pupils with calculating its carbon footprint.

Now the groundbreaking project is influencing authorities across Wales who want to replicate it – and there are hopes it will lead tov more Flintshire schools adopting it too.

Year Nine science students used Flintshire County Council’s Climate Toolkit to calculate the carbon footprint of Castell Alun High School and identify carbon intensive areas.

 

As well as improving the school’s environmental impact, the project is designed to give students vital practical skills for the future, as employers look for individuals with experience of calculating and mitigating carbon footprints.

Pupil representatives Alice Price, Tulani Karigambe, Harry Hughes and Scott Griffiths were invited to present details to the authority’s Education, Youth and Culture Overview and Scrutiny Committee alongside Head of Chemistry, Dr Amanda Heath.

“We used the toolkit to gather the information needed to calculate the carbon footprint of the school  said Alice. “We then began to look at possible ways to reduce it by assisting in the creations of a carbon reduction plan.”

“The course of lessons took around six weeks to complete,” added Harry. “Initially we used the Flintshire Schools Environmental Survey. This was really easy to use and made us really take notice of the school buildings we use every day.”

The toolkit, devised by Flintshire’s Climate Change Project Officer Ben Turpin and his team, took the pupils through each of the key areas of carbon emissions – energy, waste, transport, water and biodiversity. For example, pupils learned about the energy consumption of the school, the National Grid and how energy bills are calculated.

“With the energy usage of the school we were able to work out the cost of the bill and the carbon footprint generated from electricity,” said Tulani.

Pupils looked at all energy use and transport, including how teachers got to and from school, and worked out the carbon savings from switching to more eco-friendly options like electric vehicles or solar power.

“We also conducted a tree survey to work out how much carbon was stored in each tree on the school site,” added Alice. “This was very relevant to us after many trees along Stryt Isa were felled due to the effect of the roots on the gas pipe network.

“This ultimately means a lot of stored carbon was released back into the environment.”

“We’ve really enjoyed playing a role in helping to calculate the carbon footprint of our school,” added Scott. “In the summer term we hope to work more on the carbon reduction plan.

“This project has really highlighted the changes that need to be made and how small changes can make a big difference and we now hope to work with our eco-council to help our school move towards a carbon-free future.”

Cllr Ryan McKeown asked pupils if the project had encouraged pupils to engage with their parents about carbon emissions and climate change.

“I remember I was speaking to my mum and nan about the changes to bin collections,” said Tulani. “My nan became very aware of sorting her waste, washing out her milk bottles. It was funny because she never used to do that before.

“But speaking to my mum about the carbon footprint, she supports the idea of reducing it but for her it was very much about electric cars and solar panels. All she saw was things that cost a lot of money until we had that conversation.”

Cllr David Healey, who also sits on Flintshire’s Climate Change Committee praised the programme.

“I understand that this toolkit is home-grown here in Flintshire,” he said. “What is significant is that Castell Alun’s Head of Chemistry has developed this into a resource other schools could just take off the shelf and use within the curriculum.”

Mr Turpin said he was confident that other schools in Flintshire would now adopt the scheme.

“Castell Alun is the only school currently using the toolkit, there hasn’t been a wider uptake as yet” he said.

“However with the work that Castell Alun has done we have started to create a case study on this and they have also kindly shared the lesson materials they have created for our publicly accessible climate change webpage for other schools to use.”

“We have also presented out toolkit to other local authorities and a number of them have asked if they can use our resources to build their own toolkits.”

By Alec Doyle – Local Democracy Reporter

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