Thank you for your answers!!

At the end of year 2010 Marita (very active teacher in our school:-)) wrote to other 50/50 -schools and asked them to answer questions about the project and energy saving actions. We thought that maybe we will get only few answers. But, you have been so active!! You can read some answers in our blog. We have not put all the answers there, but we have read them to our energy team members.
I thank La Tordera school (Catalonia, Spain), Rosa Luxemburg school (Potsdam, Germany), Altalanos Iskola - Balatonerdred and Polan Dabrowa Gomicza for the answers. It has been so interesting to hear from you!

Entrepreunership education

We have had a project about entrepreneurship education. Pupils first made profiles about customers and then planned a cover for a notebook. We had over 100 suggestions for covers and we voted 9 of them. We have been thinking about marketing and how to sell those notebooks. We have made commercials and planned press handouts. We wanted to link this project to our 50/50- project and we decided to use only recycled paper and carton for these notebooks. We can then help nature. We also emphasise that detail when we sell these notebooks. We will add 50/50 -logo to each notebook and add the knowledge for saving energy and nature with these notebooks. We are planning to sell 600 notebooks and gather money for fieldtrips.

Here are some examples of notebook covers!

Consumption monitoring

We get monthly consumption readings of electricity, warmth and water. There (from the top: water, warmth and electricity)are consumption tables for each month (year 2010). There we can check if we have saved energy or not..

Comments about sorting

This spring we have focused on sorting.
What do you think, have we proceeded lately?
Osmo, the caretaker:
- Yes, I think we have done it quite well. Now we have got fine trash cans for garbage. Sometimes it is hard to remember how to sort but I think it works in our school.
How could we decrease the amount of rubbish?
-We must try to choose products with little packaging, but it is quite difficult because almost every product is wrapped properly. So if you buy a product you also get much garbage.


How has sorting gone lately?
Cleaners(Arja and Roosa) of our school:
- There is still things where to improve.
What effects have new waste containers had?
- We have moved ahead:-)
What advices do you give to teachers and pupils?
- You have to be more pedantic what to put in each trash can = waste you can burn, recycling paper or waste you can't burn.

Correspondence between Escola El Turo (Spain) and Länsimetsä school

Hello!

Here you have our answers to your questions.

1.Where do you come from?
We're from Montcada i Reixac, Barcelona.

2.Tell us about your school?
Our school is “Escola El Turó”. It's a small school. There are about 200 pupils.

3.Why did you start the 50/50 energy saving project?
Because our school is a “green school”.

4.How have you saved energy so far?
We switch off the lights when we do not need them or we just switch on half of the classroom lights because we try to use natural light.
We close the doors and windows to keep the rooms warm.
We switch off the computers and the monitors when we do not use them.

5.Do you have new ideas for how to save more energy?
No, just the ones we said in the previous question.

6.Have you been writing to your blog in the Internet?
Not yet, but we had a look at other school's blogs and wrote some comments.

7.If you have, can you tell what do you have in your blog?
We just have the school's mascot, which has the shape of a small mountain or hill. We also have a small article about a visit we did to the schools installations.

8.Have you had any special theme days or school gatherings about the 50/50-project?
No, we haven't.

9.What do pupils and teachers think about this project?
We think that the project is very good because we save energy and this is good for the planet.

We got also some questions and here are our answers:

What can you tell us about your school?
-Our school is quite big, we have about 260 pupils. The school building is yellow and made of wood. We like our school and think it’s the best in the world!

Why do you take part in the 50/50 project?
-We want to save energy because we are worried about the nature. And of course we want to the money too .

What do you do to save energy?
-There are many ways to save energy:
We don’t waste water: we wash our hands quickly and after P.E. we go to shower quick. We also check the toilet taps in case they leak.
We check that the lights are not on when not needed. We open the blinds in the morning and close them in the afternoon. And we don’t joke with the light switchs.
We close the doors and windows. And we air the classrooms very quickly.
We measure the indoor temperatures and check that they are just right: not too hot or too cold. And we control the radiators too.
We try to recycle things.

What do you do to keep warm and at the same time save energy?
-The winters are cold here in Finland so it’s important to wear warm clothes, woolly socks and jumpers are nice.
We try to avoid to overheat the radiators, the suitable classroom temperature is about 20 degrees. We keep the doors and windows closed. It’s very important to seal the window cracks so they don’t leak.

School gathering

Just before our winter holiday, on 24.2. the whole school gathered together to hall. We saw 2 energy saving videos and we reminded everyone to make sure that all the electrical equipments are shut down for the holiday week. In the afternoon 5 girls still checked the whole school. Let´s hope this will save more money for us!

Lots of snow!!

We have had very hard winter this year and we have a lot of snow here. We need much energy to warm our school this winter.