Sustainability Surrounding Us

Nachhaltigkeit in Sutton

As this is our last session, we wanted to summarise our findings from the survey we conducted about sustainability at our school. Due to the possibility of imminent school closure, we unfortunately have to conclude our activities.

Es waren überwiegend Oberstufen Schüler, die an der Umfrage teilgenommen haben. Aber die andere Schülergruppe (lower school students) wurde auch repräsentiert.

Von der 10. Klasse an kann man die Schule verlassen, um Mittagessen zu kaufen und kaufen deswegen verpacktes Essen, z.B. den Meal-Deal. Die meisten Schüler kaufen mehrmals pro Woche verpacktes Essen, vielleicht weil es einfacher ist, als Essen mitzubringen. Mehr als 40% kaufen drei bis viermal die Woche verpacktes Essen und das ist leider eine ziemlich hohe Zahl.

Unserer Meinung nach sind 43 %, die den Meal-Deal kaufen, zu viele.

Die meisten Schüler versuchen bewusst ihren Plastikmüll zu reduzieren, allerdings hätten wir gehofft, dass wir eine höhere Zahl erzielen.

Erwartungsgemäß verschwenden die Leute nicht sehr viel Essen, beziehungsweise werfen nicht viel weg. Die durchschnittliche Antwort war 13%.

Die meisten Schüler nutzen das Plastik Besteck nicht, aber zugegebenermaßen sind die Resultate nicht aussagekräftig, weil nur die lower school Schüler in die Kantine gehen. Glücklicherweise verwenden nur etwa 80% die Plastik Version.

Die meisten Schüler würden Lebensmittel nach dem ‘Best-Before’ Datum essen, vielleicht weil es in Großbritannien so formuliert ist. “Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum” klingt negativ und strenger als die englische Variante ‘Best-Before’. Vielleicht sollte man in Deutschland etwas an der Formulierung ändern 😉

Mit der letzten Frage wollten wir herausfinden, welche Einstellung wir zur Umwelt haben. Die meisten versuchen umweltfreundlich zu leben aber manchmal fällt es ihnen schwer. Zusammengefasst kann man sagen, dass sehr viele von uns Nachhaltigkeit schätzen und das ist super!

Hier sind Verbesserungsvorschläge, die wir gegeben haben: viele SchülerInnen haben gesagt, dass man weniger Plastik verwenden sollte. Man soll auch mehr Pflanzen aufstellen und das Recyclingsystem verbessern. Obwohl sie unterhaltsam waren, glauben wir nicht, dass viele der Vorschläge funktionieren könnten (‘shorter school days- no school uses less energy’ und ‘no lanyards therefore less plastic’). Aber viele der Vorschläge waren nützlich, z.B. regionale und saisonale Lebensmittel zu verwenden.

Thanks for reading and following our project throughout the year. We enjoyed the exchange and hope to stay in contact through this blog.

Unsere Erfahrungen mit ‘Beeswax Wraps’

Sutton High School Girls met for a session of beeswax making last Monday and we would like to share our experiences with you: beeswax wraps are a sustainable, washable and therefore perfectly reusable alternative to plastic lids. Wrapping your daily lunch sandwich in beeswax wraps helps to reduce plastic waste. And frankly speaking: they look great 🙂

Was man benötigt: some scraps, beeswax, banking paper, (coconut) oil, iron and iron board. We collected some fabrics at home and from members of staff at Sutton High.

Erstens: Stoffe zuschneiden (cut the scraps in wrap-sized pieces)

Zweitens: Öl auftragen (apply some oil)

Drittens: Bienenwachs auf dem Stoff verteilen (spread some beeswax beads on the fabric)

Viertens: zwischen Backpapier bügeln (iron between two pieces of banking paper)

Fünftes: an den trockenen Stellen nochmal nachbessern (apply some more beeswax on dry places) und nochmal bügeln (and iron again)

FERTIG!

The iron shouldn’t be too hot and in our experience cotton fabrics worked best. Do you have any experiences with self-made beeswax wraps?

Food in Hamburg

My name is Rosa I´m 18 years old and from the Beruflicheschule für Wirtschaft und Handel Hamburg Mitte. I and four other classmates worked with our language assistants Victoria on the topic sustainability.

We worked in our group on the topic food. At the beginning we brainstormed about what is sustainable food and which restaurants in Hamburg are sustainable. When we were finished with this task, we started to develop our individual projects.

Malte wrote a food diary. He captured his food for about 2 weeks and tried to eat more sustainable. He tried to eat less cheese or meet. There he reflect his food habit.

Sinja created a recipe book, where she wrote down sustainable recipes ideas. In her book you can find recipes with meat, some vegetarian and vegan food ideas. She was also able to speak with the owner of the restaurant she works at about their sustainable practices.

Mohsen researched where you can find sustainable food in Hamburg. He also talked about his own experiments working at a supermarket and in a delivery service. What the companies already do to be sustainable and what they maybe have to change.

Mohsen’s research into sustainable food in Hamburg

I researched some sustainable apps, which can help you to be sustainable. I show you some apps which you find in the English Appstore and some apps which I especially use in Hamburg.

I look forward to reading what you got up to with your food projects and telling you about what we learnt about fashion!

PS Sutton Grammar School: We will be sending our booklet to you soon!

Sutton Grammar School stellt sich vor

Wir haben an einem Video gearbeitet, das Euch einen Einblick in unsere Schule gibt und zeigt, wie es um unsere Mülltrennung bestellt ist. Die Willkommens- Box aus Hamburg hat uns sehr gefreut und wir haben die Postkarten in unserem Korridor an unser ‘sustainability board’ gepinnt. Viel Spaß mit unserer Einführung von ein paar Year 12 SchülerInnen:

SGS stellt sich vor
#Nachhaltability

Survey Results: Food & Waste in Köthen

Two weeks ago we started a survey about food and waste in Köthen and now we will show you the interesting, and perhaps surprising, results of our survey.

The first question asked how much food is wasted in our homes. It was quite surprising how many people throw away about half of their food. On the other hand we are happy that so many people (almost 50%) only throw away 0 to 20% of their food.

A best before date is the date chosen by the manufacturers after which the food starts to turn bad, however the food is usually still edible at this point. We think that it is very positive that no one sticks to the date because less food will be thrown away when it is still good. It’s also very positive that a large amount of people will wait a week before throwing food away.

The survey clearly shows that being a vegetarian or not is a very personal decision which is up for each individual to make themselves. It is also clear to see that whilst half of the respondents said that they wouldn’t be a vegetarian, half of them said they would! If people want to become a vegetarian they do it for a mixture of reasons; for themselves, for the environment and for animals.

We were surprised at what a mixture the answers to this questions are and it doesn’t show a clear result. Some people buy a lot more food than they need, whilst others stick to a list.

82% of people had a positive answer to this question, which is a good thing because buying regional food is important and causes less carbon dioxide than other foods which travel around the world.

A lot of people grow their own fruit and vegetables. Whilst a lot of people try to buy seasonal food this can be difficult when there is something specific you want to eat.

It’s surprising that only one person chose environmentally friendly food specifically, but it’s a good thing that a lot people care about both. Healthy food is the clear winner as overall (when combined with the scores from ‘both’) most people think about health.

These results show that a lot of people are concerned about the environment. Questions 1, 2 and 4 give the most interesting answers and show that most people try hard to be sustainable in their eating habits.

Obst und Gemüse Saisonkalender

Die Schüler und Schülerinnen der Stanway School haben zum Thema Sustainabilty and Food einen Kalender erstellt, der zeigt was in den jeweiligen Monaten Saison hat.

Doch zunächst haben sie sich natürlich die Frage gestellt:

Unser Kalender

Feburar wird schnellstens nachgereicht 🙂

Welcome to BS02

To introduce our school we thought it would be more exciting to use the directorial talents of our very own Mohsen and Rosa’s natural abilities as a presenter to give you a tour around where we spend our days…

We were really excited about opening the welcome boxes from Sutton Grammar School and we were pleasantly surprised that the students from England had written with such good German. It was pretty cool to learn something about the school in England and to see how different our boxes were. We really loved the sweets and would love to do something like this again! -Sinja

Welcome to Sutton High School

Hi, we are students at Sutton High who support sustainability and want to make a difference. Here are some things about our school.

What is special about your school?

I like how everyone in our school has the chance to get to know people from all across the year groups and we have quite small classes, my smallest class has eight pupils! Our school is found near the High Street in Sutton and we spend around seven hours a day in and around school. Our School supports sustainability, and one of the ways we support it is that we have meat-free Mondays every week, because even though it’s a relatively small scale project, it makes a huge difference.

What more can you tell us about your school?

Sutton High school is a private school for girls. There are many opportunities here to learn and try out new things. We also have a strong community here with girls from all over the world mixing together. Our school days start at 8:25 and end at 3:40 in the afternoon. Sometimes the school days can feel long and stressful especially as we have 8 periods a day, 40 minutes each so we are moving around constantly. However, we all help each other out and with small class sizes, it’s easier to understand and work.

What is your school uniform like?

Our school uniform includes a white shirt and black blazer. You can also wear a purple jumper over the white shirt – it’s optional. We also wear a blue and purple kilt with navy tights and black shoes. We are allowed to wear one pair of earrings. Students in the Sixth Form can wear whatever they like to school, but it has to be ‘smart clothing’.

How do you separate waste at school?

We have a recycling system for paper and general waste.

(written by Danya, Bethany and Mushy)

Welcome to Sutton High school!

This our main entrance for visitors, the stairs lead to reception. Every visiting person has to be registered as well as every student who enters and leaves.

Sutton High Street isn’t far from the school. There are many shops and a few trees (it looks much better in Summer when the trees have leaves on them …) between the rainy picture and the normal one lie only a few minutes. That happens a lot in England, so have your umbrellas ready when visiting the UK!

The school has different departments for the different subjects. There is the music and art department for example, the biology, chemistry and physics department, PE (physical education) and a few more. Not to forget the MFL (modern foreign languages) department, of course. MFL include subjects as French, German, Spanish and Latin. The following picture shows the building for Language Assistants, where the 6^th Formers in Year 12 and 13 have their speaking sessions for A-Levels.

This is the corridor in the MFL department. We have our German classes here.

We also have a lot of art projects at school. There are paintings and artwork hanging on the walls almost everywhere at school. The following pictures are some examples:

Last but not least – please have a look at some pictures of our school yard, the Sixth Form Centre and the lovely brick buildings.

Weihnachtswerkstatt 2019

In the final week of term the students at the Freie Schule Anhalt in Köthen enjoyed taking part in their ‘Weihnachtswerkstatt’. The school runs many project weeks throughout the year with teachers from all subjects working hard to plan and run exciting tasks for their students. The topic of the most recent project week was ‘Everyday for future’. Students from all classes took part in a range of exciting projects looking at different aspects of sustainability from upcycling to the impact of our mobile phones on the environment. The students worked in classes of mixed ages to produce fantastic final products including Christmas decorations, jams and clothing from waste materials. Students also had a wider impact on the community with some visiting and raising money for the local Tierheim and others visiting elderly residents in the local care home to spread Christmas joy. The week culminated in a carol service at the church with the project orchestra and choir beautifully leading the service which also included a brilliant nativity play by other students and a message by the priest on sustainability. On the Friday the students enjoyed presenting their products (and in some cases selling them!) to the rest of the school before heading off on their Christmas holiday.

Below the students in my class describe the work in five different project groups. To gather this information the students devised interview questions and then visited other project groups to interview the students and find out what they had been working on.

In dieser Gruppe dreht sich alles um ‘Grünen Strom und Energiebedarf‘. Ihr Ziel ist es ein Pumpspeicherkraftwerk zu bauen. Die Nachhaltigkeit in diesem Projekt besteht darin, dass die Verschwendung von Naturressourcen wie Braunkohle vermindert wird. Es sind an diesem Projekt 16 Schüler beteiligt aus den Klassenstufen 7, 9 und 10. Diese wollen nach unserer Projektwoche weiterhin nachhaltig leben. Sie haben diese Gruppe ausgewählt, da sie sich für praktische Arbeit begeistern.

In der Projektgruppe ‚Klimakiller Handy‘ sind 18 Schüler und Schülerinnen aus den 6-8, und 10. Klassen. Sie beschäftigen sich mit ihrem Handy und dessen Umweltauswirkungen. Sie haben dieses Projekt gewählt, da sie mehr über ihren alltäglichen Begleiter herausfinden wollen. Ihr Ziel besteht darin, durch ihr erlangtes Wissen, rund um das Thema Handy, nachhaltiger zu leben durch, beispielerweise durch weniger Handynutzung.

Was wollt ihr mit der Projektwoche erreichen?

Tieren im Tierheim helfen.

Was habt ihr bis jetzt schon gemacht?

Im Tierheim ausgeholfen und Spielzeuge gebaut, die für die Tiere sind.

Was habt ihr noch vor?

Spenden fürs Tierheim.

Warum hast du diese Projektgruppe gewählt?

Weil ich Tiere gerne helfen will.

Wie siehst du das Thema jetzt?

Wichtig und interessant.

Below is a picture of some of the toys the students made for the animals:

What is your project group called?

‘Mobilität Klimafreundlich gestalten’

What do you do in your project group?

We are preparing for our school exchange to France and are making project posters on the theme of avoiding waste.

How many students are taking part and what class are they from?

25 students from class 8b are taking part.

What is the aim of your project?

The aim of the project is to prepare for the school exchange to France and to make the trip to Cluses sustainable.

Would you like to continue to be sustainable after the project week?

Yes, I will.

What is your project group called?

The name of the project group is ‘Upcycling Everyday Items’.

How many students are taking part?

Seventeen students are taking part.

What ages are the students?

They are in the classes six, eight and ten.

What is the aim of your project?

The aim of the project group is to turn old things into new, usable things.

What product will you produce?

I want to make a pen pot out of a tin can and some wood.

How will you make it?

First I will get some wood and a tin can and glue. Then I will put the glue on the tin can and stick the wood to it. Ready!

Why did you choose this project group?

I chose this project group beacause I want to learn how to upgrade useless things into usable things.

Below is a link to a brilliant video produced by students from the group ‘Nähwerkstatt: Upcycling Kleidung’. They describe how they upcycled old fabrics, including old coffee bags, into brilliant new products.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6VbiFAiac5/

The students all greatly enjoyed spending the week together working on different projects and learning more about the environment and sustainability. It was great to see the students learning new skills and facts that will help them to live more sustainable lives in the future.

Freundliche Grüße aus Köthen!

The Year 10s at the Freie Schule Anhalt are wonderful, kind students who are working-hard to improve their English skills. All of the students are excited to be part of the #Nachhaltability project and to get to know the students at the other schools. The Year 10s have already started writing letters to our friends in Sutton and Colchester and have worked together to answer the following questions about their school, town and their expectations for the project.

Why do you like living in Köthen?

We enjoy living in Köthen because it is a small town and isn’t such a big city like Berlin or London. There are many things to do in Köthen, for example, you can visit the castle. We have a lot of foreign restaurants, for example Chinese food, Greek food and American food. Furthermore we have lots of sports clubs, for example HG85 Köthen (which is a handball club) and a lot of soccer clubs, such as CFC-Germania or SG Reppichau. We enjoy going to the ‘Mensakeller’ (where there are cool parties). We also like the bakery and the shops, and the train station which helps us go to other cities.

An interesting fact is that Köthen was home to some historical personalities, including Johann Sebastian Bach.

Tell us about your school:

The Freie Schule Anhalt is a Christian, evangelical school. We often work in groups and spend a lot of time together. Our school is a big community and that’s really cool because everyone knows everyone and you have many friends in every class. We have many partner schools, for example in Russia, France, the USA, Africa (Tansania) and the Czech Republic.

There are many things that we like about our school, for example we really like our school system. We often do ‘open lessons’ (where students have greater choice in which tasks they complete). We also like that we have three lots of 90 minute lessons instead of six lots of 45 minutes. Additionally we have the subject cooking which is so fun!

One student said; “For me the best thing about the school is that the relationship between the students and the teachers is very nice and relaxed. You don’t get the feeling that school is very hard and stressful.”

We also have many Project Weeks at our school, for example ‘Everyday’s for Future’, which we really enjoy.

What are ‘Project Weeks’?

In ‘Project Week’ we split into groups throughout the whole school and work on special projects with other students. This goes on from 8 to 12 o’clock each day for one week. Next week, all project groups are looking at the topic ‘Everyday’s for future’. On Thursday at 4pm there is an event at the church. You can do many different activities, for example, you can be part of a choir, join the project orchestra or work with wood.

Why is sustainability an important topic?

Sustainability is an important topic because people are destroying our environment with plastic and more. The lives of people in the future will become even harder.

Sustainability is an important topic because of climate change and we need to protect our environment to keep our earth safe for future generations. We like to help the planet. It’s so simple to change your life and be more sustainable. It will give you a better life experience.

One student wrote about an important system in place in Germany; “There is something that I think is really good that we do in Germany – it is called ‘Pfand’. It’s a system of recycling bottles which you paid for, and if you bring them back to the shop you get your money back. This encourages you to bring the bottles back and get your money instead of throwing them away and harming nature.”

Why are you excited to take part in the #Nachhaltability project?

We are excited because it’s a new experience to work with schools and students from other parts of the world, not just with students from your own neighbourhood. We are excited to write letters to and work with UK schools because we can make new friends and learn the language faster and with more fun.

It’s so exciting to contact new people with a different mother-tongue. Everybody can learn about the other culture and make new friends. An exchange can only bring you forward in your life and the experience is unforgettable.

It is very exciting for us because we think it’ll be really interesting to learn about British schools and get in contact with other students. We would like to know the difference between German and British schools, for instance the different subjects. We are excited to get to know the students and their traditions better. Not only will we get to know their habits, but they will also learn a lot about our culture. Next year some of the students will go to the USA or the UK on an exchange year, and so are interested to stay in contact with native english people.

We are very grateful to have received a wonderful ‘Welcome Box’ from Colchester and cannot wait to read your letters and enjoy eating the treats you sent us! We hope you enjoyed our first blog post. If you have any thoughts you would like to share or questions you would like to ask the students, please leave a comment below!