Assembly - Greenr

This Week’s Assembly

By Mr. Graham Carter, Eco Committee

Every day, it seems, you hear stories of how terrible global warming has become, how humans are destroying our planet . . . and don’t get me wrong, Earth is in a perilous situation and we are destroying our planet. I’m not here to tell you otherwise. Humans are the solution too, by the way.

The problem is that the gravity, the seriousness, of the situation can seem completely overwhelming. It just seems too much to do anything about, so when we are told every year in ILS to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, it can often seem as though only a massive effort will do and that anything else is just not worth it.

I’d like to show you a short story by Wangari Maathi, a Nobel Prize-winning Kenyan woman. It’s a story about a little hummingbird.

(Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMW6YWjMxw)

“I am doing the best I can.” Combine that with Greenr’s slogan, it counts, and there you have the message of my assembly in a nutshell. I am doing the best I can. It counts.

Greenr consists of a loyal activity group who meet every Monday, who oversee and try to help out with numerous projects around school to encourage green behaviours. Most of these projects are student - especially 6th form - led.

Since I have been working with Greenr, our overall aim has been to encourage everyone to take responsibility for their own environmental impact. The theory goes like this (and stop me if the maths gets too complicated for you): I do the best that I can to reduce my carbon footprint in my everyday life. That makes a little difference. That’s good.

If, in addition to the best I can do, Seung Kyun does the best that he can to reduce his carbon footprint, that makes a little difference X2. By my maths, that’s a slightly bigger difference. If Mr Gillmore now joins Seung Kyun and I in doing the best that we can to reduce our carbon footprints, then that now takes our total to a little difference X3, and I think you can see where I am going with this …

Every day there are over 1000 people in this school. If every one of those people was to take responsibility for their own carbon footprint, by my maths, that is a big difference. A massive difference, in fact, which this school can make.

At Greenr, we do not send minions around school, turning down the air conditioning in all the classrooms which have been made to resemble freezers. Instead, what we try to do is to provide everyone with the opportunity to shrink their own carbon footprints. To make a collective difference.

I’ll give you some examples:

· With no small amount of help from Ruby Le, Mr Chandler and Esther Kim, we have provided the school and the local community with a beautiful battery recycling point. It’s just outside this room. If your dead batteries end up in landfill sites with all your other rubbish, they poison, literally poison,  the earth. Bring them here instead and they will be disassembled and re-used. No earth poisining required at all!

· Another example,  a couple of 6th formers (including our head boy) gave a series of assemblies last year demonstrating how you only need to use one paper towel to dry your hands. It’s two steps. Those two steps: shake, and fold. There is a poster in every bathroom to give you a little nudge in the right direction and I’ll send your form tutors a video to freshen your memories.

· We have put a paper recycling bin in every classroom and provided a central paper recycling point on the 2nd floor, so that our used paper no longer gets burnt into the atmosphere, but is instead reused, saving a few more vital trees.

· We do research to find out what things would be most effective, and think of ways to get that message across. Look out for beautifully thought through and created posters reminding you about what a difference keeping your air-conditioning on full power makes to our electricity consumption. Courtesy of Max Dyer and Rafal again.

· We are creating a recycling bin to be used around school, so no longer will you have to put your orange peel and your other waste in the same bin. This will dramatically improve the amount of waste we are able to recycle as a school. Our assistant head boy, Karvin, and Hetvi Shah will be predominantly to thank for those.

All of these Greenr initiatives around school are designed to show you how easy it is to do your bit. No-one wants to be like those other animals: standing back, watching and doing nothing as our forest burns.

If you can see something which needs changing. Send us an e-mail, and let’s see what we can do about it together. [Can you think of ways to encourage fewer people to come to school in private cars? Or can you think of a nice way to tell people that eating meat every day is waaaaaay worse for the environment than a vegetarian diet, so they should think about not having a hamburger tonight?]
That hummingbird, doing the best that he could, [and all the people I have named who are doing the best that they can,] inspire me. They inspire me to do the best that I can. I think of the hummingbird frequently when I am tempted to just throw my paper in the nearest bin rather than find a recycling bin, or when I’m out shopping and every shop I go to tries to give me 2 more plastic bags to add to all the packaging my buys already have. Remembering the story of that hummingbird always encourages me to do the right thing - to hold onto the paper for 1 more minute, or tell the shop attendant that I don’t need a bag thank you.

This year, Greenr will be introducing a Hummingbird Award. Greenr, your teachers and your peers will be looking out for, and nominating people who are doing the best that they can, and who are inspiring others to the the best that they can.

Wangari Maathi was a hummingbird. She’d have definitely won a hummingbird award. In fact, she won a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. She really did the best that she could and was an inspiration to millions. Look her up. Sadly, Wangari Maathi died of cancer almost exactly 2 years ago, so it seems only right that I give her the chance to finish this assembly. Let me leave you again with that inspiring little hummingbird, and try to remember the hummingbird as you go around. After all, each little bit that you do: it counts.