Culmstock Primary School

Culmstock Primary School is fortunate to be located in a beautiful part of the world.  The children are very aware that the world is a precious resource that we need to look after.  They were very moved by David Attenborough's documentaries and we even had a reply from him after Mrs Francis wrote and told him what we were doing.

The children have driven our desire to be plastic free and are very passionate about saving the planet. We participated in an Eco Day and then signed up to Sky Ocean Rescue and Surfers Against Sewage projects to help us on our journey to be plastic free.

These are some of the things we have done to be less reliant on plastic and to recycle more.

We worked in collaboration with The Old Well Garden Centre to set up a crisp packet recycling centre and they also donated litter picking equipment for the children to use after break and lunch times.  The children then went further and we now have a recycling hub in the school to recycle plastic bottle tops, used batteries, used writing equipment, crisp packets as well as recycling our paper.  We no longer use glitter in school and the children were very creative about trying to use coloured paper, flower petals and leaves to decorate their artwork.  As a staff we rarely laminate anything.

Last summer as our contribution to the Culmstock Flower Show each child made a beeswax wrap as an alternative to plastic film wrapping.  We were very fortunate that the Heathcoat factory donated us the cotton fabric to use.  The children decorated their fabric square using food safe fabric paints and pens.  These were then washed and ironed.  They were then coated in beeswax.  Mrs Francis had a very busy time! When we returned to school in September 2019, the Flower Show came back into school to award prizes and the wraps were returned to the children.  It is lovely to see many of them still using them and some families have made their own too.

At Christmas we once again worked with the Old Well who asked us to design posters to advertise their Christmas tree recycling service.  The whole school took part and a winner was chosen.  The poster was then printed onto flyers and distributed at Christmas shopping events.

We continue to strive to be as plastic free as we can, encouraging children to use reusable lunch containers and water bottles whenever possible, recycle rubbish and think about reducing their impact on the environment.