We are thrilled to announce that King's Ely Prep has achieved the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award!

Our tenacious Prep Eco Committee returned to school to discover the exciting news that over the summer holidays their determination and efforts to make King's an eco-friendly school, and help protect the environment, have been recognised with the prestigious award - with Distinction.

The Eco Committee, members of whom are pictured, have been focusing on three main initiatives - Healthy Living, Energy, and Litter.

The Healthy Living Team have been working with our Catering Manager, Mr Billy Logan, and his colleagues at the Monastic Barn, to label the planet-friendly choices on our lunch menus. Joining forces with the Litter Team, they have been encouraging pupils and staff to bring a packaging-free healthy snack, such as a piece of fruit, into school. If people brought in a different snack, they were asked to store it in a re-usable pot or box rather than a single-use package, which is something we are continuing to promote as a school community now that it is starting to become the norm. We are hoping to eventually become a single-use packaging-free site to support reducing litter, plastic waste, and food costs.

The Litter Team have also labelled recycling bins around school, encouraging the use of re-usable snack pots, and they gave up one of their Saturday mornings in the Summer Term by donning their hi-vis, grabbing their litter pickers, and exploring Ely to see what discarded rubbish they could find.

The Energy Team have been working closely with our Chief Operating Officer, Mr Mark Hart, to count the energy used in our school buildings, and encourage people to switch lights off when they leave a room, and ensure that devices are turned off at plug sockets, rather than left on stand-by. This is hard to measure the success of as it is difficult to isolate our Prep School's energy use from the whole school, but the Eco Committee has observed and recorded positive changes in people's behaviour around school.

Mrs Helen Melville, Teacher of Geography at King's Ely Prep, runs the Eco Committee with the children. She said: "This is a huge accolade for our Prep School. It shows just how much effort has gone in to trying to make our school as planet friendly as possible. The Eco Committee were behind the choice and implementation of the projects required for the award. The whole team are to be congratulated for their commitment, dedication, and energy throughout this whole process, which has taken well over a year of planning and work. It was with great pride that we raised the Green Flag on September 14th with Head of Prep, Mr Kibler!

"We now need to choose which topics to continue with and which new one to add, in order to renew our Green Flag for next year. We would like to thank every single person who has helped us, from Form Tutors who completed surveys to everyone who now brings in a reusable snack pot. We hope that some of the things that have been implemented continue to very much become the norm, and we ask you all to join us in helping to keep King's an Eco School, and to support us in becoming even more green over time."

Bravo team - we look forward to seeing what brilliant initiatives you come up with this year!