Green Schools Programme

We are proud to have been awarded National Water Conservation Secondary School of the Year.

Green Schools is Ireland’s leading environmental management and education programme for schools.

Promoting long-term, whole-school action for the environment Green-Schools is a student-led programme with involvement from the wider community. The programme is operated and coordinated by the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce. An Taisce is the national operator for all international environmental education programmes of FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education).

We have an active Green Schools committee in St Tiernan’s, which has resulted in us being awarded our green flag plus a number of other environmental awards. Under the programme the committee had the opportunity to participate in an Erasmus activity, which was enjoyed by all.

Water Conservation School of the Year – Activities

St Tiernan’s students and staff monitored water meters daily and graphed their usage over the year, which resulted in approximately a 30% reduction in water wastage.

A poster competition was run to raise awareness of the project and a “Turn it off” poster campaign was launched.

“Adopt a river” cleaning and preservation was practised with the River Dodder which runs adjacent to the school.

Actions taken included:

• Putting “Hippos” into school cisterns.
• Switching to environmentally friendly cleaning products where possible.
• Organising a water conservation public debate and their own walk for water event.
• Caretakers undertook an environmental training course.
• Water conservation was added into the school curriculum.
• Water experiments were carried out.
• Flowers and vegetables were grown with water collected from water butts.