Environmental Sustainability Update

South Island School is committed to becoming as environmentally sustainable as possible. To this end, we have created an environmental policy which provides a framework and targets that we are working towards. The policy is on the school website.

We have recently been focusing on section B of the policy and in particular looking at the cleaning products that we use in the school. Conventional products contain many toxic chemicals which pollute the water system, the oceans and eventually infiltrate the food chain. We have been able to source environmentally friendly cleaning products from a company who are supplying us with carpet cleaner, washroom cleaner, floor and surface cleaners for classrooms. All of these products were tested by our cleaning team and found to be totally satisfactory. This represents a very significant proportion of all the cleaning products we use in the school. We would encourage everyone to look into buying similar products for household and workplace use.

We have also sourced Totally Degradable Plastic (TDP) garbage bags to replace the normal plastic garbage bags which go to landfill. We use around 50,000 of these bags a year at SIS, so this represents a significant reduction in our environmental footprint.

There is a corresponding increase in our expenditure as these products are more expensive, however, if more of us start using them, demand increases and prices should become more competitive. Imagine the impact if we could have ALL ESF schools using these products!! That would be making a difference.

Ben Edwards