Greening Bedales: starting the campaign

Design teacher Martin Box is leading the ‘Green Bedales’ campaign. He said, “We want all students and staff to consider the environmental consequences in all of their working activities.”

What should this mean in practice? The school has been canvassing the views of staff, students and experts in the field. Dozens of suggestions have been submitted, from the draconian (Ban 4x4s! Ban bottled water!) to the pragmatic (wear more clothes and turn down the heating), from the educational (introduce a compulsory subject – ‘Caring for Earth’) to the technological (heat the school with wood grown on the estate).

The larger-scale proposals were the subject of the Greening Bedales seminar in September 2007 with eminent speakers, including Charles Secrett, former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth and currently Advisor on Environment & Sustainability to the Mayor of London’s Office; Camden councillor Alexis Rowell (Old Bedalian), who oversees the greening of the borough; James Hanson (Old Bedalian), a consulting environmental engineer; Maddy Harland, Bedales parent and co-founder of Permaculture magazine; Siân Berry, Female Principal Speaker for the Green Party; and Max Fordham, one of the country’s leading authorities on environmentally friendly engineering.

As part of the information-gathering exercise, the school has talked a dozen former Bedales students who are experts in sustainability and the environment, including Bill Dunster, architect of BedZED in Surrey, the country’s first carbon-neutral housing development. Staff have visited Brill School in Buckinghamshire, which has an impressive record of reducing energy consumption, as well as Professor Tony Marmont’s internationally renowned consultancy, Beacon Energy, in Leicestershire. The Carbon Trust has already carried out an audit of energy usage at Bedales, which shows where savings can be made.

Bedales students have been encouraged to contribute their own ideas through working groups on topics as diverse as the Psychology of Waste (how to win over hearts and minds to the cause of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’), and a Paperless School.

The school’s response to the green challenge has been keen and immediate. As Martin Box said, “It illustrates the community’s concerns but also their enthusiasm to take action.”