A Desire to Make Change

Alleyn’s has enjoyed a fantastic fifth Sustainability Week this week, 14-18 November. Our pupils and staff have thrown themselves behind the events and activities of the week – from going meat-free at lunch to clothes swaps and a lot of active travel. 

But the enthusiasm our community shows for protecting the environment isn’t limited to one week in the year. We have passionate pupils and staff in abundance who are driving home the message through committees, societies and their own individual actions every day.  

We hear from one passionate student, Year 12 Head of Environment Society, Martina, on how she developed an interest in sustainability and why it is so important to focus on at school.  

When I was younger, I wasn’t all that passionate about sustainability (or being eco-friendly as I called it then) as I didn’t view it as that big of an issue. However, I have now completely changed my mind and am trying to help others change theirs as well. I don’t think it was one specific event that got me into sustainability, but it arose from a greater awareness of environmental issues as I grew older (mainly through Sir David Attenborough documentaries) and a desire to make a change to the world.

I first joined Environment Society because I was friends with the person that ran it. However, I stuck with it because I began to realise how useful it was to have a space where people could talk about random environment related topics that they’d heard about or knew something about and wanted to share.

I had previously stopped reading the news because of how negative it was and knew that others didn’t read it either (even if they did, it was mainly the headlines and they never made it to any environment related news), so when I took over as the Head of Environment Society, I wanted it to be a place where I could share things that I had read about, or have a more focused session on something really interesting that I’d read about and researched further. I alternate doing a talk about general eco-news with a specialised talk.

For example, during Sustainability Week I did a talk on lab-grown foods, explaining how a sample of cells taken from a (harmless) sesame-seed sized biopsy of a cow can be cultivated and grown in a lab to create 60,000 burgers. I also did a talk on the future of nuclear fusion as a reliable and renewable energy source. And I have previously talked about E-waste as well.

I feel passionate about sharing these messages. I think being more sustainable is something that everyone can and should achieve, so what better place to start educating people about sustainability than in a school?

As a society, Environment Society has generated greater awareness and knowledge about the environment amongst pupils – it is a safe place for people to simply come together to share their ideas and opinions.

Because I am Head of Environment Society I was invited along to the school’s Sustainability Committee and it was the first time I really saw for myself all the work that happens behind the scenes. I saw how much the teachers themselves actually care about making the School more sustainable and I hope that everything that we talk about in the committee gets put into place as soon as possible.

Sustainability Week is a wonderful way bring the school community together. My highlight from Sustainability Week was going to Dulwich College for a seminar on sustainability where we were led through discussions in small groups about environment related topics and what we as individuals and as members of our schools could do to improve our sustainability. We focused mainly on the Sustainable Development Goals and my favourite activity was when we were tasked with ranking them into what we thought were the most relevant and important goals for the UK. Through discussing each goal, it was a wonderful way to hear different people’s opinions on sustainability and other global issues, which is something that we rarely get to discuss so freely on a daily school basis. Simply having a place for that discussion with people whom I had never spoken to before was a highlight for me.

I hope that the collective focus on sustainability throughout Sustainability Week and the new things that we have all learnt about help to keep sustainability on everyone's agenda.

Find out more about sustainability at Alleyn’s and our school aims on the sustainability pages of our website.