Day 7 school #10: Dumpton School

Pretty shadow patterns on my
morning ride up the Castleman
Trailway

For the second time this week I was on the Castleman Trailway. Now familiar with the route, I sped through the trees from Hamworthy up to Wimborne (in 35 minutes! Woohoo!) and then on to Dumpton School, in its idyllic rural setting. What a place to receive your education!


Environmental awareness weaves it's way into life at Dumpton in many ways, thanks to the enthusiasm of the staff team led by the enigmatic Mr Browning.




First there's the everyday jobs. The 'Paper Police', for example, are a self-organised group of pupils who collect paper from all the offices and classrooms every week for recycling. Then there a number of ways the curriculum and extra-curricular work support children's learning about the environment. Here are just a few of them....

Growing success  

An allotment plot with it's scarecrow

A whole range of extra-curricular activities support children to learn in and about the natural environment. The school's allotment is a thing of glory. Established by Mr Browning, the idea that children can opt to spend their lunchtimes in the allotment if they want to.
School staff supervise the allotments but don't organise specific activities - the children just get on with it and are encouraged to experiment on their own plots. Which plants grow better? What's the optimal amount of watering? How might they improve the yield of their crops? What will keep the pests away?
So besides playing and relaxing, the children are also (unwittingly) doing some independent learning, and occasionally get some vegetables to eat.
Children from Year 3 upwards are allowed to take on an allotment. Before that, in Pre Prep, the children learn about what plants need to survive, so the allotment is an opportunity for them to put their knowledge into practice.




The Fiver Challenge plant stall, looking blooming lovely.
 Can you spot Reg?

Pupils' horticultural skills were put to use this summer in another extra curricular activity, the Fiver Challenge. In this activity, pupils were given £5 and challenged to create a micro-business that generated profit. The gang of entrepreneurial pupils at Dumpton decided to invest their money in seeds and seedlings, which they planted or brought on until they were ready to sell.

When I arrived, some of the industrious pupils were setting up their stall ready to sell to parents. They explained their choice of plants (everybody loves a geranium!) and how many they thought they would sell. Deborah Meaden would have been hugely impressed!

A green curriculum

Across the school, teachers make imaginative connections with environmental topics through their curriculum learning, and often make use of the amazing outdoor spaces in the school to help them.
Year 3 showed me their potato project. Each pair of children was given 3 potatoes to plant in a tyre planter. They had to nurture the plants, and at the end of the summer term they got to dig up their potato crop.
The activity was loaded with Maths, including

• counting the number of potatoes at the end of the season
• weighing the potatoes
• working out averages - what's the average weight of a potato? What's the average number of new potatoes grown from each seed potato?

What a simple but richly interesting way of using the outdoor resource to aid learning.


🥔 🥔 🥔 🥔 🥔 🥔







Children's plastic pledges - click for a bigger image

Pledging on plastics


Here's another fab example of curriculum work by Dumpton pupils on an environmental theme. Another school to be inspired by the news about plastic in the oceans, the children produced this fantastic display featuring facts about single-use plastics and wrote their own pledges to reduce their use.


The teachers got involved as well, making their own waste-reduction commitments, including a pledge to stop laminating! Well done teachers!

Teachers' plastic pledge - click
for a bigger image

Lastly....plastic work goes experimental! The children had heard about biodegradable plastics and were considering switching to biodegradable plastic cups in school. But how do you dispose of a biodegradable cup? It can't go in with plastic recycling, and in landfill

it'll just release a load of methane (greenhouse gas). How long does it take a biodegradable cup to break down, and could they be composted at school, the children wondered?

Reg at the biodegradable plastic test site.

Here's their experiment to find out! Underneath this matting, the children have buried a selection of 'compostable' and regular, non-biodegradable plastic containers. They plan to check back regularly to see which containers have rotted down and which are still there.
We loved this thoughtful and experimental approach!


Mrs Cox also explained how she was making every effort to introduce pupils and parents to a lower plastic lifestyle - for example giving away bamboo toothbrushes and reusable food containers as prizes for school activities. She's right - we all have to start with small changes, and I was totally inspired by the efforts being made throughout the school.


Keep up the excellent work, Dumpton!



Day 6 School #9: Ferndown First School

Another scorching hot day and I was relieved at not having to cycle quite as far as yesterday!
Getting to Ferndown First School from Dorchester would have been a 60-ish mile round-trip on busy roads, and even with my battery assistance I didn't fancy it. So I decided to make use of another sustainable mode of transport and throw the bike on the train for part of the journey. By getting the train to Hamworthy I could link up nicely with the cycleway through Upton Country Park and then the Castleman Trailway, which would take me very close to the school. Plan.

Bikes on trains

Waiting for our first train ride at Dorchester South station 

Challenge #1 ensued: getting the bike on the train. As I've mentioned before, the old Hoffmeister is a heavy beast. Whilst I'm reasonably adept and manoeuvring my own little hybrid bike onto a train bike rack, the thought of manhandling this one into position was weighing (geddit?) on me somewhat.
Luckily for me, as the train doors opened a kindly guard stepped out and offered to lift the bike into the carriage for me. I don't think he realised what he was getting himself into, but by then it was too late. He was thoroughly committed to the helpful act so between us we humped the metal monster and it's cargo onto the carriage, and I'm pleased to report no-one was injured in the process.

Castleman Trailway fingerpost in the
dappled woodland light

Castleman Trailway

The Castleman Trailway is a 16.5 mile route that follows much of the old Southampton to Dorchester railway line. It is known as one of Dorset's gentlest way-marked routes and is used my many for walking, running, cycling, horseriding and buggy Olympics, but it was completely new to me.
I was delighted by two things:


Firstly, how easy the trail was to find and follow. From Hamworthy right up to Stapehill where I left it, the trail was easy to pick up and a reassuring abundance of fingerposts ensured only a real idiot could get lost (I did once).
Second....the shade! Phew! Once again the temperature outside of the shade was in the high twenties. But most of the trailway runs under a canopy of beech, lime, chestnut and pine which gave a lovely dappled light and much more bearable temperatures.

The Fabulous Ferndown First

This was my first visit to Ferndown since they (fanfare) achieved their much worked-for and greatly deserved Eco-Schools Green Flag earlier this year. The school's Eco Champions have been working towards their award for several years, led by the very dedicated Mrs Smith and Mrs Lord. They showed me some of the projects they had been working on this year.

Wildlife and habitats

Lots of children at Ferndown First have had the chance to explore the wildlife in their school grounds this year with help from volunteers from the RSPB Schools Outreach Programme. Fortunately there are lots of plants and habitats in the school grounds, like these newly-planted native trees, which provide lots of food and shelter for animals. The children are able to find many bugs and evidence of squirrels and slow worms in their school environment.

Also with help from the RSPB, the Eco Champions got to build this fabulous bug hotel, which Reg thought was quite marvellous. The materials for it came from Homebase - businesses can be really generous if you ask nicely!

Eco Code

Here Reg with the school's Eco Code. This green 'mission statement' reminds pupils of their responsibilities towards the environment when at school and is one of the things you need to have for your Eco-Schools award. The Eco Champions have made sure that the code is displayed all round the school and everyone knows about it (they even challenge pupils to say it by heart!).

Recycling
The Eco Champions have set up some special recycling points for materials which might not ordinarily get recycled.

Have a look at these recycling bins. What would you normally do with a dead highlighter? Most of the time the only option is to bin it. At Ferndown, you can recycle it! Same with (of all things) biscuit wrappers. The best thing is that the school earn money when they send these products away for recycling - what a winner! It's all part of a free scheme by the recycling company Terracycle.

The plastic bottle tops get sent to Lush Cosmetics, who make them into pots for their products. They must be very grateful to Ferndown for all the useful plastic they send!


Going Plastic-Free

Lastly, the Eco Champions' most ambitious project so far: tackling plastic waste! Like many other children I've met on this tour, they had learned about the harmful effects of using too much plastic and chose to take action by signing up to Plastic Free July.They started by doing a surprise lunch survey of everyone's snacks and lunch boxes. They were very shocked to find a total 324 bits of single use plastic. Presumably that's the same every day.....adding up to 1620 bits each week or a staggering 61,560 bits of plastic thrown away every year!

For Plastic Free July, the Eco Champions wanted to reduce that number. They designed posters and asked everyone to bring their food in reusable pots, bags or tinfoil and drinks in reusable bottles. Their plan is to survey again in July and see if the amount of plastic has reduced. Good luck to the champions for this bold plan!


The children are making such a name for themselves as local champions that they were also asked to help launch the new community initiative, Plastic-Free Ferndown. Over the coming months the Town Council will be working towards the Surfers Against Sewage 'Plastic-Free Community' status. Read all about it in Viewpoint magazine here.


Butterfly workshop

We finished the visit by learning about another type of wildlife that sometimes visits the school grounds; butterflies. We learned about the amazing straw-like mouthparts that they use to suck nectar up with, and learned that many of the butterflies in the UK are declining, often because they can't find enough food.
One way to help butterflies is to make sure there's plenty of nectar around for them to feed on, so we made these beautiful butterfly feeders. The sponge in the middle holds some home-made nectar (a sugar and water mix), and the colourful flower attracts the butterfly.
Visit the school blog to see them hung around the school grounds, waiting for hungry butterflies!

The butterfly feeders also got a mention in Viewpoint magazine! Well done everyone!


So there we have it - the Ferndown Eco Champions: looking after wildlife at school and taking care of the Earth's resources. What true champions they are.

Plastic in Dorset: The Facts

Warning: this post contains statistics!

So far on my travels I've met many children and teachers who are deeply (and rightly) concerned about the problem of plastic in the oceans and its effect on marine wildlife and the human food chain. David Attenborough's Blue Planet II, along with films like A Plastic Ocean have opened our eyes to the scale of the problem and sparked action from communities across the globe. Dorset is no exception, with brilliant community initiatives like Wimborne War on Waste and the Plastic-Free Dorchester initiative.

Some of the effects of plastic waste in Asia

You can find statistics out there to fill all the squared exercise books in Dorset. Scientists have estimated that the amount of plastic entering the oceans is between 4.8 and 12.7 MILLION metric tonnes (view),  and last year we learned that up to 95% of the plastic waste in the oceans comes from 10 highly polluted rivers running through densely populated regions of Africa and Asia (view). Predictions have been made that my 2050 the plastic in the oceans will weigh more than the fish. While some people question the comparison, everyone agrees the amount of plastic in the oceans is huge and growing.

Evidently there are big questions about how waste is managed (or not) in other, mostly poorer, parts of the world. But how are we in Dorset contributing to the problem? What's our role?

Prompted by my visit to Durweston Primary school and the children's questions, I felt it was time to get some facts!

The information below was provided by the Dorset Waste Partnership (DWP), who oversee all the waste and recycling collections for Dorset households and businesses. So while it may not be a complete reflection of every single thing used and thrown away in the county, it's a good starting point.

1. How much plastic do we use?

It would be incredibly difficult to work out how much plastic is actually bought and used each year in Dorset. But from the waste and recycling figures we can say something about how much is thrown away. In Dorset:

• 

  Statistics from Dorset Waste Partnership

  13% of the recycling collected by DWP each year is plastic. That equates to 3,900 tonnes of plastic recycling each year in Dorset.
• That includes 84 million plastic bottles a year (calculation by DWP).

84 million plastic bottles recycled. Each year. Just in Dorset.

2. How much gets recycled?

A child at Durweston Primary had read a statistic that only 25% of the plastic we put in to recycling bins actually gets recycled....which would be very worrying indeed. But is it true?
DWP were able to fill me in....

59.4% of the total waste in Dorset gets recycled. That's one of the best recycling rates in the country!


As far as plastic goes, the proportion that actually gets recycled varies. It's more than 25%, but different factors might mean that plastic collected for recycling can't actually be recycled. For example, if the plastic isn't clean it contaminates the recycling. Or certain items that are made of low-grade plastic may not be recyclable.
Recycling services are different throughout the country. This is because there are many different types of plastic, and councils need to be able to sort them efficiently and have a system for recycling each of the different types of plastics. Some councils collect certain types of plastic, e.g plastic bottles. We are fortunate in Dorset that we can put a range of plastic items in our recycling collections:

• plastic bottles (including milk, soft drinks, shampoo, shower gel, cleaning products)
• plastic pots (including yoghurt, cream, soup)
• plastic tubs (including margarine, butter, ice cream)
• plastic trays (including fruit and vegetable punnets)
• plastic lids (they must be placed back on the plastic bottles, pots and tubs)

Visit Dorset For You for further info about recycling in Dorset

So when you hear reports, such as the recent report that only 1/3 of plastic food packaging is recycled, it might be because some councils don't have the systems available to recycle the same range of plastics that we do in Dorset.


BUT there's a further complicating factor! Most plastic recycling is sent abroad to be processed, so the ability to recycle it also depends on the availability and cost of recycling abroad at any given time.


It's starting to look terribly complicated!  What do we know for certain? That we use A LOT of plastic, and that SOME of it is recycled. It's hard to be more accurate than that.


Contact your recycling provider yourself and ask for some information.

3. Does our plastic end up in the sea?

This is a tricky one.  If you drop rubbish on the ground, or put it in an overflowing bin, then that rubbish will end up in the environment. It might stay close to home (e.g. get stuck in a hedge), or it might get washed into a river and potentially out to sea. Anyone who's done a litter pick along a river will have seen how much plastic and other litter collects in the vegetation and in the waterway, and we know it can cause harm to wildlife. Rubbish left on beaches will almost certainly wash into the sea and cause harm.


Compared to the amount of plastic delivered to the oceans by those 10 African and Asian rivers, it's not a lot. But it still makes our towns and countryside look untidy and feel less safe and enjoyable. It harms our local wildlife and potentially hurts wildlife in faraway places.


Thanks to the good waste collection and recycling services we have in the UK, any rubbish that we dispose of carefully - by recycling or putting it in a waste bin - should not end up in the oceans. It does still have an environmental impact though - think of landfill sites, pollution from incineration or the energy cost of recycling.

4. Why else should we worry about plastic?

So.....while litter is a problem, Dorset's waste plastic probably isn't responsible for most of the ocean pollution we hear about. But there are important reasons why we should be worried about plastic. Whilst researching this, I learned two facts that really made me stop and think:


Fact 1: Making plastic uses energy and resources
Plastic is made from oil. The oil - a non-renewable resource - has to be extracted from deep underground, transported to a refinery, then to a chemical plant to be made into nurdles, transported again to a factory where it's made into the final product which is transported AGAIN to a depot.....you get the idea. Every stage uses energy and involves the release of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.


This paper, by researchers at the Pacific Institute analysed the amount of energy that is used to manufacture, fill, cool and transport bottled water. They estimated that the energy inputs of producing bottled water is up to 2000 times that of producing tap water. The manufacture and transport of the bottle were the most energy-consuming stages.
In a world of climate change and a growing population, is this how we want to be using the Earth's finite resources?


Fact 2: Plastic can't be recycled infinitely.
Whilst glass and aluminium can be endlessly melted and re-shaped, the bad news is that plastic can't. The water bottle you recycle won't come back to you as another shiny water bottle. While it can be recycled a few times, plastic eventually loses quality and generally gets 'downcycled' i.e. made into something of a lower quality than the original material. So your plastic bottle may become a plant pot, and then perhaps a fleece.....but then that's it! Done! It can't be recycled any further.

So the ability to recycle plastic doesn't make our huge plastic consumption all ok. As we learned above, not all plastic gets recycled, and recycling has an energy cost (think of the lorries required to transport the recycling to the processing plant, and the energy to clean, melt and re-mould the plastic). And when plastic is recycled, you quickly end up with low-quality plastic that you're stuck with forever.

5. What should we be doing?

Given that the resource cost of producing plastic is so high and that plastic recycling isn't without its problems, there's really only one answer to this question: use less of it.

• Buy less plastic, particularly single use plastics; they are environmentally costly to produce but used for only a short time.
• Re-use the plastic you have for as long as you can.

Day 5 School #8: Durweston CE VA Primary

Looking back along Milton Lane towards Winterborne Stickland
as I catch my breath after the climb

Confession: I was slightly apprehensive about this cycle. More than slightly. Dorchester to Durweston, avoiding the terrifying Blandford Road, is about 17 miles (via Dewlish, Milborne St Andrew, Milton Abbas and Winterborne Stickland) and not remotely flat. It was also hot. With forecast temperatures in the high 20s I set off, with a degree a trepidation. Despite the considerable ups it was an enjoyable and picturesque ride with plenty a panoramic view.



Part of the school building (taken for the benefit of the
Renewable Energy Officer - how many solar panels will it fit?)

Durweston is a small primary school in a stunning location; another of Dorset's small schools where you feel that genuine 'family' vibe the moment you walk in. I had been invited by the Seahorses class (Year 3) to find out about the work they'd been doing on plastic.


Before I describe it, here's the most brilliant thing about their plastic project: it wasn't at all planned. Mrs Stirk, the teacher, had her half term all planned out. But one morning in assembly, the Head Teacher had shown a picture of a beach covered in washed-up plastic waste. The children were enthralled, and perplexed.

The Indian coast of the Arabian Sea

(photo credit: Rajanish Kakade, Associated Press)

Where had the waste come from? How had it come to be polluting the beach like that? Where else in the world is there plastic on beaches and in oceans? Could Durweston be part of the problem? The children had so many questions!


Mrs Stirk is clearly one of those teachers keen to feed the children's interest (and perhaps also someone who knows when she's outnumbered). So ditching her planned learning, she and her class spent the following weeks covering the curriculum by exploring all their plastic questions. A huge hats-off to Mrs Stirk and Mrs Brooke!

1. Science and Maths

Wanting to find out whether plastic litter was a problem in their school, the children designed a survey to compare the amount and types of rubbish in the ground in different parts of the school and the village. They had to think hard about how to make sure it was a fair comparison! Groups of children surveyed different areas - the field, the front of the school, the road outside and the playground -  and recorded what types of litter they found. Presenting their results in graphs helped them to answer a few of their burning questions......

Some of the children's graphs. Apologies for the bad photography,
Reg got a bit over-excited

Yes, even in lovely Durweston the children found plastic litter on the ground - plenty of it! Inside the school gates, they mostly found plastic wrappers (from crisps, biscuits, cheese strings, yogurt - you can picture it!). The messiest place however was the play park, where as well as the wrappers they found hard plastic items like pen lids and cable ties. 

Nothing like using real-life data to bring your statistics work to life!
Take a look at their class blog for photos of the rubbish they found in those different places.

2. Art

The children found inventive ways of using what would have been throwaway plastics to make some attractive items. How do you like them roses?

3. Design challenge

Plastic is a unique material with lots of useful properties, which the children explored. Their challenge was to raid the recycling bins and to design something new using the plastic items they found.

A range of different bird feeders were on display, all designed and made by the children using plastic bottles in different ways.

You can read more about these fantastic activities on their class  blog.

4. Whole school campaigning, and an excellent pun

Having explored the properties of plastic and gathered data about plastic waste in school, the children decided it was time for action! Their idea was to encourage everyone in school to reduce the amount of plastic they brought to school in their packed lunches by holding a low waste lunch.  

The children worked out simple swaps they could make for a more eco-friendly lunch box. Helpfully, when they looked at it they realised that the changes they thought of also made for healthier lunches......so the Low WASTE Lunch became Low WAIST Lunch!

To give children and parents ideas they shared this YouTube video on 'How to Pack a Waste-Free Lunch' in their school newsletter - well worth a watch for some great tips!

Questions, questions, questions......

Having done so much work about plastic, the children had come up with a lot of thoughtful questions.  One was 'when did litter start?'. What a question! Would there have been litter in Blandford in 1918 or 1818? Thinking about the types of things we find as litter, we thought it must have had something to do with the invention of takeaway food and pre-prepared food products in the 20th Century.

(I later tracked down some helpful resources on this subject - see The Pod's History of Food Packaging Timeline and this Sky News clip on the history of plastic).

There were many other questions about the scale of the plastic problem, in Dorset and around the world. The children had done lots of their own research and come up with some statistics which they weren't sure about. How much plastic do we use in the UK? Is it true that only 25% of plastic in recycling bins actually gets recycled? What proportion of Dorset's waste is made up of plastic?

Sometimes it's ok to say you don't know. I had no idea what the answers to the children's questions were, so I bravely told them so and promised to ask someone who would know. Fortunately I have some very helpful contacts at the Dorset Waste Partnership! See my next blog post for some pertinent answers to these pertinent questions....

E-bike Lovers Anonymous 

I couldn't possibly finish this post without a mention of the utterly inspiring Head teacher, Mrs Brooke. Already a keen cyclist, Mrs Brooke recently acquired an e-bike and since then has used it for her daily commute from her home in Wareham into school every day. Together we compared notes and enthused about the (many many) pros and (hardly any) cons of e-bikes. 

My 'I've found a shady spot and
 I'm never leaving' face

Hard to tell, but this is melting tarmac on

the road near Dewlish!

Mrs Brooke made the salient observation that in most cases, e-bikes replace cars, not bikes, while also pointing out that the hill I had to climb on my route back to Dorchester is a killer even when you have battery assistance. She was right on both fronts.
By the time I was cycling back it was noon and HOT....so hot that the roads were becoming sticky and the bike made little 'popping' sounds as I rode through little spots of sticky tarmac.


Tempting though it was to loiter and admire the scenery, the Seahorses had given me homework to do......so it was full steam back to Dorchester and recycling statistics!