Green Cranbourne

Green Cranbourne is a movement to make our school and the local community more sustainable. Our aim is to be a sustainable school and a beacon to other schools in Basingstoke, Hampshire and further afield.

The prevalence of climate change in the media can make young people and adults feel helpless. We have decided to do our bit to reduce the impact we have on our environment and to teach young people that by working together with a common goal we can make big changes!

All members of our learning community are involved in their own way in making our school more sustainable and tackling climate change.

We have six main goals:

To reduce our energy consumption and aim to generate our own energy

To increase the biodiversity of our school site

To reduce our reliance on plastic

To produce more plant-based foods, reduce processed foods served in our canteen and reduce food miles to lower our Carbon footprint

To reuse, repair and recycle materials where appropriate

To grow our own food, to teach students how to grow food and to provide access to vocational qualifications to improve our food security and reduce our impact on the planet

We have launched several initiatives across the school to help encourage students to take accountability for their waste and recycle where possible. We have increased the number of recycling bins around the school site - you are never more than 20 metres away from one! Every fortnight we empty around 4,400 litres of recycling, which is the equivalent of 14.5 bathtubs full!

Students are encouraged to return their empty plastic bottles and cans to the Canteen, where their accounts will be credited 5p. We have a battery recycling collection box located in Reception, which saw 25.5kg of used batteries recycled last year.

Students can also recycle their old, used and broken pens by placing them in the mini bins in classrooms. Since launching the initiative last year, we have recycled an impressive 14kg of used pens that would have otherwise gone to landfill.

Every Wednesday, Miss Blackburn and Mr Targett meet with students as part of our Gardening Club. Students have been hard at work making our very own veggie patch, growing tomatoes, bell peppers and strawberries and more to be used in the canteen. We have also started composting food waste in the canteen and in our staffroom, which will be used to enrich the soil and help our veggie patch to thrive.

Our Catering team have worked hard to reduce the food miles created by our food deliveries and are exploring options to put more plant based foods on our menu.

Each year, we host ‘The Big Cranbourne Clear Up’, where our students volunteers set out into our local community armed with litter pickers and get to work cleaning up the local area. Last year, an impressive 16.5kg of landfill waste and 9kg of recyclable materials were collected.

Green Cranbourne students have presented at various events in the area to share our successes with Hampshire Governors and inspire other local schools. In July 2024, we were delighted to have our achievements recognised at Basingstoke ‘A Place to be Proud of Awards’, where we were awarded the Green Community Champion Award, sponsored by Tomato Energy.

We are striving to make Cranbourne as paperless as possible, sending all communications via Edulink - reducing our energy use and paper.

We welcome any offers of help, gardening tools, plants and any ideas on how to build on the foundations of our journey so far to become the most sustainable school in Basingstoke and beyond!

Cranbourne Sustainability Plan 2025
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