In our area there is a river that floods often in early Spring when the water table is already high, but the increased rainfall in recent years has increased the incidents. In our school we have engaged with the Picker Pals program for the last 2 years and our children go out with parents in turns at night collecting and recycling where possible, rubbish they find. During Winter and Spring a focus is centered on the River banks and river to ensure drains are not blocked.
Another action we could take is to gather people in the school and wider community to plant trees and plants along the river banks to increase water absorption, rainfall collection and slow down the rise of the river.
3 actions we can take in school
1. As part of Active Flag last year we encouraged initiatives to walk/scoot to school. It will be more difficult this year as we are moving locations and it will be a longer journey, so we will have to more strongly motivate to keep the initiatives going. We are considering organising a CycleBus as they have in Galway as there are no bicycle lanes yet on our new roads. We need to write to the council to get the cycle lanes painted. This will reduce the burning of motor fuel.
2. This year we will be applying for our Green School Flag. So we will be actively encouraging the recycling of rubbish and reusing of materials in the classrooms. We already encourage the children to take home their left over food to be composted by when we move to our new school we hope to purchase a composting bin. Some of our leftover food is fed to our wormery.
3. We are quite committed to teaching and living Biodiversity as much as possible. We have designated wild flower gardens around the school to encourage bee pollination. We have a wormery up and running and a bug hotel and different classes are given responsibility for maintaining them. We currently have an allotment where we grow vegetables, pumpkins and sunflowers. We reuse the sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. Groups from each class are taken to dig, plant, weed and harvest throughout the year.