On Friday 20^th June, High Down Schools in Portishead hosted the ^3rd Eco Festival. Eco leaders from St Peter’s, Portishead Primary, High Down, St Joseph’s and Backwell Juniors all came together to celebrate their eco achievements and to learn more about what we can do to help our planet.

In the morning, pupils had team building activities including archery, followed by a carousel of workshops where they worked together in mixed school groups. Each group was named after a tree: daisy group, rose group, sunflower group and lotus group.

Pupils learned about reducing plastic waste and the importance of litter picking to clean our beaches with Turn the Tide Portishead. They taught us about microplastics and the impact they have on marine life.

North Somerset Council shared information about recycling at home into the green boxes and pupils had a go at the recycling race. We had to sort out the rubbish and put the recycling in the correct boxes.

We learned about clean air and green travel to school with the Sustainable Travel and Road Safety expert from North Somerset Council. We wrote down our clean air ideas to share with others and we explored how we could travel to school in a green way which was also good for our physical and mental health.

The Garden Waste team helped us learn more about compost – what can be composted and how to create layers of green (plant) and brown (cardboard) waste. We explored compost soil and minibeasts with the team and got to use their digital microscope.

At lunch time, pupils had the opportunity to work with Mrs Russell from St Peters on creating a recycled sculpture of wings. The children decorated intricate designs onto recycled cardboard, before assembling as wings. The children also planted seeds with Portishead in Bloom. Each child took home a plant to look after!

In the afternoon, we were visited by Stephanie Franklin, the Environmental Officer from LSP schools. The children listened carefully as she delivered an important talk on the significance of pollinators in our eco system and how we can protect them.

The children then worked together to create an eco declaration with ideas for our own schools and as a collective to work on together. Each school then presented their achievements from this year as eco teams. We heard about new recycle bins, fundraising, litter picking, bug hotels, garden work, work in the community and creating new allotment gardens.

Thank you to everyone who took part and helped to support our special day!