For the past two weeks, Our Lady of Mount Carmel have taken part in the ‘Switch off Fortnight’ campaign to save energy by making significant changes in our school.  

The Eco warriors started the week off by completing an energy audit of the school to see which appliances and lights were turned on, on standby or off. Also, to measure the success of the campaign Mr Travis took gas and electric meter readings before, during and after so that we can truly see the impact.  

The Eco team then introduced the campaign to the school and came up with ideas of how we could use less energy. They then introduced a competition between the classes to see which year had the ‘naughtiest light switch’ or the ‘naughtiest monitor’. Each class were tasked with making sure that they turned off the lights and boards when they were not in use and the Eco team checked the classrooms each lunch time and added to the tally chart if appliances and lights were left on.  

All staff have been trying really hard to save energy by turning off their monitors as soon as the children leave. They have also been turning appliances off instead of leaving them on standby.  

We also got an electrician to come into school to reduce the amount of time the sensor lights stay on for from 25 to 10 minutes. Hopefully, this will make a big difference in our energy bills! 

The whole school have come together and worked so hard to save energy and the Eco team could see a big difference when they did their final energy audit.  

We have enjoyed the challenge so much that we are going to keep our ‘naughtiest classroom’ competition going to make sure we do our bit to save our planet.  

By the end of the fortnight, Year 5 were the naughtiest class! However, they have promised to try harder next week and to not get any tallies!