Earth Hour 2011 at Länsimetsä school

Halfway information

We have now got intermission information about our energy saving campaign. Here follows the information of water, heating and electricity consumption. We have done a good job and these fine results certainly inspire us to take more active actions - both students and adults!

HEATING
So far we have decreased heating consumption 3,2%. It means 600 euros. With this money you can heat detached house for one year. Excellent job!
You still have to remember:
- air quickly
- don't twist thermostats in barracks
- shut front doors and communicating doors
Window seals are now fixed and we remind evening users not to keep front door open.

ELECTRICITY
So far we have decreased electricity consumption 2,4%. This means 450 euros. With this money you can pay electricity usage of one detached house. Very good job!
You still have to remember:
- turn off unnecessary lights and apparatus
- don't leave "rest electricity" on
- pay special attention to lights in copier room, switch them off!
It easy to save elctricity if only you are active. Don't blame others, act yourself!

WATER
We have not get any savings in water consumption - instead we have consumed 1% more water than earlier.. This is irritating, naturally.
You have to:
- take quick showers
- wash the hands in the way you save water
In future cleaners and kitchen personnel have to pay more attention on water consumption, too.
Our goal is to get savings also in this area!

Recycling weekend

On 25.-27.3. we had a special 50/50 - weekend at our school. Our parents comittee organized a fleamarket at school. Everybody was able to come and sell all kind of things that are useless for them but maybe a treasure for someone else. As you can see in the picture, there were many people and over 20 families were there for selling. This is real recycling things. In many families, actually children were there to sell and buy. We also carried all the "lost and found" clothes to the fleamarket and everybody could check if there were familial clothes or even just some clothes that you would like to use. In the end of the fleamarket some parents wanted to donate some skates and children books to our school.

We also got big containers for electric waste and metal junk in our school yard. Everybody could throw metal and electric waste in to the container for free. We made co-operation with Iki-Metalli company. The containers were there the whole weekend and we are actually getting some money from the metal junk. As you can see in the picture, a lot of broken bicycles and old computer monitors are now in right place.

The last but not the least action for the same weekend is to take part in Earth hour -campaign to help nature by swiching the lights off in the evening for one hour. You can see a video about that action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMwArLkF0oU





Heidi, active member of our energy team, wrote:
"In our school there was recycling happening whole weekend. On Friday we got two big containers in school yard. You could bring there metal and electric waste. We get money out of this junk; for example 5e/kilogram for copper. We took junk from home with my father and brought it to both containers. We carried there two old televisions, four computers, toaster, pans, lantern and metal garden chairs. Just after that we went to P.E. hall. There was a fleamarket event. There were about 25-30 sellers and they were selling for example clothes, books, cups, toys and some bikes. In the evening I went to icehockey match, but my mother and my brother took part in Earth hour -campaign. So we saved energy the whole weekend!"

Let's play eko or ego

We got great board games to our school. The name of those games are eko or ego. The idea is to start to think how different activities effect to you and to nature. You can choose from four different alternavites; good for you and nature, good for you but bad for nature, bad for you and good for nature and the last is bad for both you and for nature. The activities are for example switch the lights off, use train to travel to Lapland, dry your clothes in a dryer... We had a lot of dicussions during that game. It really made pupils to think! There are actually no right or wrong answers. Those board games were free and anybody can order them via Internet: http://subjectaid.fi/

Our energy team & a handy man:-)

Here are the Boss, Kirsi Autio with pupils from our energy team.
Here is Saku from Finland, Vaasa.
We had a meeting where we discussed about how to save more heat. We realized that insulators in some of the windows were very poor. Here is a picture of a handy man. He is going to move window frames just a little bit so that the whole window would fit better to its place. Let´s hope this plan will work.

U4energy -project

We decided to take part in an international project; U4 energy. We recieved a big envelope. There were 2 posters, some stickers and other important information. We put posters to school walls to remind us how to save energy. Two pupils (Sanni and Hanna) have been very effective on switching lights off from toilets and other areas. They decided were to put those 4 stickers. There are 2 toilets were there are often unnessessarily lights on.
You can find more information on Internet:
www.U4energy.eu

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!