The Eco-Committee
Forming an Eco-Committee is a fantastic opportunity for young people to regularly meet, share ideas and discuss actions that can make their schools more eco-friendly. The Eco-Committee takes the lead on environmental initiatives within their school and wider community.
What is the Eco-Committee?
The Eco-Committee is a group formed by environmentally-centred students from a variety of year groups who are mentored by an adult eco-coordinator. Ideally, an eco-committee should include teachers, non-teaching staff, administration, and parents who lead the school community on the Green Flag journey.
In some cases, schools will go through a full election process with manifestos, election speeches, canvassing, election posters and ballots to fill the various positions on the committee!
What does the Eco-Committee do?
- organise regular meetings, at least twice per term, to discuss environmental action for the school;
- carry out an environmental review and develop an action plan;
- record minutes showing the results of group discussion and actions to be taken;
- consult the whole school in the decision-making process;
- share progress with the school community and promote the ethos of environmental education.
TOP TIP: To get things started on the right track - invite your local council Environmental Education Officer or Recycling Officer to one of your meetings to offer support and advice
Find out who to contact in your area.
Once you have elected your Eco-Committee, you should then move on to Step 2 The Environmental Review.
- A representative group of pupils and adults meet to discuss environmental action for the school.
- Meetings take place at least once per term.
- Minutes of each meeting are recorded.
- Results of group discussions, actions and proposed decisions are communicated to the rest of the school.
- Pupils put themselves forward to be part of a decision making environmental committee.
- There is representation from the wider school community on the committee.
- The committee meets a minimum of once every half-term.
- Pupils share responsibility with adults for keeping minutes of each meeting.
- Pupil representatives ensure the dissemination of information to and from the committee.
- Pupils put themselves forward and are selected by their peers to be part of the Eco Committee.
- Pupils are given the opportunity to approach adult members to join the committee for specific tasks.
- The committee meets at least once every half-term.
- Where possible, we recommend that pupils chair the each meeting, keep the minutes, and detail how decisions have been made.
- Minutes are displayed on an Eco-Schools notice board.