Schools

The Sustainability Festival (SustFest) is an annual festival of sustainability events across St Albans, Harpenden and the villages. Each year, it features a SustFest Schools Week – schools, children’s and youth groups register to take part by running an event or activity of their choice.

Activities range from practical activities, such as tree planting or restoring school ponds, to assemblies and pupil conferences, for example about reducing plastic. Check out our resources below including ideas, assemblies, activities and ideas from previous years too.

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Ideas for SustFest Schools/Youth Activities

A whole week or a few young people on one activity – it’s up to you how much you do for SustFest Schools Week but we’d love to have you on board each year!

Hold an enrichment day/week around….

• appreciating and protecting nature
• reduce / reuse / recycle
• climate change and climate justice

Debate and Discuss

• get the students to take the lead on what is important to them – student conferences, debates, strategy meetings and assemblies are all appropriate for older students to run

Grow/Eat Food

• Ask parents to come in and dig over veg beds ready for planting
• plant seeds in newspaper pots
• take a group of children to help at Incredible Edible St Albans community food growing plots.
• build bug hotels
• plant a tree
• explore vegan cookery
• learn about sustainable fish

Energy

• monitor lights and interactive whiteboards to see if they are switched off
• launch a fundraising campaign for solar panels on your roof
• mount an anti-idling campaign aimed at parents for drop-off and pick-up

Nature

• explore a local park or nature area and find nature on your doorstep
• go on a bug hunt
• make pictures out of sticks and leaves
• leaf-rubbing
• pond-dipping
• bird-watching

Waste

• have a “waste free lunch” challenge and try to cut food waste for the week
• do a litter pick
• build a greenhouse out of plastic bottles
• mount a campaign to use both sides of paper in school
• read books on eco-subjects including Duffy the Sea Turtle or Hunter’s Icy Adventure and other books in the Wild Tribe series to learn about plastics and marine life

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Participants from previous years

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Inspiration from previous years

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Make the everyday running of your school more sustainable with these tips and resources.

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School Culture and Policies

At the foundation of any sustainable school is a culture of “eco” that permeates management, teaching, students and PTA.

• The government has set a target for all education settings to have a sustainability lead and a climate action plan in place by 2025.
• Create a staff member Sustainability Lead role and consider the same for the governing body.
• Make a Sustainability Policy for your school’s students and staff to work towards
• Talk about Climate change with students and teachers. We have plenty of resources in our Educate Now section. Ensure it permeates the curriculum.
• Join in with local organisations and campaigns listed on our Join Now page, including our own Schools Networking Events and SustFest Schools Week.
• Book a visitor to your school. Sustainable St Albans Climate Champions are available to give talks in assembly or to Year groups. Contact us via the contact form at the bottom of our main Schools page.
• Use the Hertfordshire County Council Schools’ Sustainability Resources.
• Use the Herts for Learning Climate Schools resources.
• Use the Transform Our World Climate Action Planner tool which is designed to help everyone in the school community understand the issues surrounding the climate crisis and what they can do to take action to reduce your school’s carbon footprint.
• Set up a student eco group. Consider working towards an award such as a Green Flag Award from Eco Schools.
• Consider sharing these resources on ‘eco-friendly’ fundraising with your PTA
• Consider sharing our template PTA sustainability policy with your PTA
• Ecosia – why not switch your school search engines to default to this one that plants trees for every search made.
• For further detailed information, you may wish to visit the Brighton and Hove Our City Our World website which has lots of information for schools including curriculum plans.

Useful Case Studies (mostly St Albans District)

• Our blog with Mel Parr from Let’s Go Zero, who is working with some local St Albans schools on their sustainability: “Sustainability Planning? Let’s Get Started”.
• Beaumont School’s blog with us “Top Tips from a School Sustainability Lead“.
• Sandringham School’s podcast “How Green Is Your School?” released by Herts for Learning Climate Action Schools which has lots of useful advice (and several  ‘just one thing you can do’ tips) for sustainability leads starting out.
• Alban City School’s solar panels
• Crabtree Infants’ School’s journey to cutting single use plastic
• Using a Thermal Imaging Camera in school: Sandringham School’s activities with students
• A series of short videos from St Andrew’s Chedworth showing its progress towards becoming a net zero carbon primary school
• Discover how a Blackburn secondary school installed a heat pump under their playing field as part of its drive to net zero.
•  Killigrew School’s Eco-group investigated the effect screens have on heat loss from their classrooms.
• Marlborough Science Academy have a great webpage listing all that they have recently done for sustainability.
• The Meat-Free Monday campaign is becoming more popular with schools and a number have persuaded their catering companies in St Albans District to go meat-free on Mondays.

Energy & Electricity

• Calculate your school’s Carbon footprint using online UK government resources
• Look at the Energy in Schools website: a helpful tool aid for schools to be more energy aware and reduce their energy, whilst giving the opportunity for pupils to use BBC micro:bit technology to solve problems.
• See where your school’s heat is escaping by borrowing a thermal imaging camera from Sustainable St Albans. Children love to use these too: see what Sandringham school and Killigrew School did when they borrowed one. Beaumont School used the camera to check their recently installed windows, and heat losses from other doors and windows. To borrow the Community Camera (available for week+ loans, for free) contact the Harpenden Camera Team directly at thermal.imaging@sustainablestalbans.org 
• Simple changes like switching off lights and turning off whiteboards can have a big impact across the whole school.

Green Spaces

• Investigate funding for greenspaces for children
• Download the excellent Wilder St Albans Schools Information Pack for initiatives and plans on “Enhancing the wildlife value of school grounds and learning outside the classroom “. They can send Wildlife Champions to your school to give advice.
• Organise a visitor to your school. Both Herts Middlesex Wildlife Trust Wilder Schools programme and Wilderhood Watch have Wildlife Champions who do schools visits [charges may apply].
• Plant some trees! Free trees can be obtained via The Woodland Trust’s free trees for schools programme. Not possible? How about raising money for trees to be planted somewhere else? Try a non-uniform day for Just One Tree or a similar organisation.
• Attract bees and butterflies to your school. Seedball are offering schools 250 wildflower seedballs
• Encourage children to litter pick at school. Make it safe with gloves and child-sized picks.
• Enjoy this short video from the Ver Valley River Society about the invertebrate life in the River Ver which runs through St Albans
• Identify common British bird species and attract birds into your school grounds.
• Plant pollinator-friendly plants
• Further activities to attract wildlife into the garden

Food & Diet

• Join Meat Free Mondays and try their impact calculator, where you can find out your impact on animals, people and the planet by having meat-free days. 
• Olio for Schools – help schools pass surplus food to those in need; also teaching resources and activities
• What is your schools milk solution? Still using individual cartons with plastic straws? Why not ask your milk provider to supply large cartons which you serve in cups? Read how one local school changed this.

Waste and Recycling

• Reduce: Plastic:
  • Learn how to cut down your school’s single-use plastic using Surfer’s Against Sewage’s Plastic-Free Schools or Plastic Clever Schools.
  • Get your children, parents and staff on board using these National Geographic Plastic Reduction resources.
• Reduce: Food Waste:
  • Consider recipes to cut down on food waste: Food Waste Recipe Finder
  • Share your school’s food waste via Olio
  • Consider starting a compost bin
  • Turn your food waste into nutrient-rich compost with the Soil Squad collection service.
• Reuse:
  • Reuse, Upcycle and recycle your school uniform! Use this parent founded website or hold uniform sales with the PTA
  • Promote sustainable period products for students and staff. Contact Wuka– a local business that produces sustainable period products and check out resources on Waste Aware, too.
  • Try refillable whiteboard markers from brands like Edding.
• Litter picks
  • Both Veolia (waste contractor for St Albans District Council) and Harpenden Town Council loan sets of litter pickers for use by schools.
• Recycle:
  • Separate your waste to ensure maximum recycling.
  • Who is your waste contractor? Did you know that St Albans District Council will pick up dry recycling fortnightly and food waste weekly from schools for free? They will provide all the outside bins, too. Contact Louise Palmer at the council on 01727 819428  louise.palmer@stalbans.gov.uk.
  • Use the Council’s Recycling Guide to see what they can and cannot collect
  • Herts County Council has shared recycling resources including free assemblies and activities

• Consider hard to recycle items:
  • Recycle your crisp packets
  • Investigate TerraCycle’s hard to recycle solutions including crisp cans, makeup, stationery and more
  • Herts Sustainable Periods – free reusable period product demonstration kit and training for teachers (how to use and clean the products, health and environmental benefits). Please email periods@hertfordshire.gov.uk.
  • Why not encourage families to bring hard to recycle items to school and then take the collected items to a central point. Examples from local schools include pens, batteries and baby food pouches.

Greener Travel

• Promote active and sustainable travel plans with Modeshift Stars. Katharine Warington School in Harpenden won their Secondary School of the Year award in 2024.
• Use the Clean Air Day (June) toolkit and resources for schools from St Albans District Council.
• Read our blog about HomeRun, an app helping locals reduce their school run journeys. This is an innovative app, used by St Albans Girls’ School, Samuel Ryder Academy and other local schools. It lowers the numbers of cars used on school commutes, reducing traffic & air pollution outside the school gate’. Find out more on the Homerun website.