Deanpark Primary School took on a project to clean up Bavelaw Burn after three members of their Eco-Committee expressed concern at the amount of litter affecting people and wildlife.

Pupils at Deanpark Primary School took on a project involving a local burn.

The school had litter pickers around the school grounds all year but the Eco-Committee organised a community clean up with the help of the council of an area around Bavelaw Burn and Malleny House, and encouraged as many people as possible to come together.

It was exciting for pupils to have other groups involved, and to have had replies from local councillors, Scout and Cub groups, newspapers and to see their work on the school website.

The idea came completely from three girls in the Eco- Committee who had expressed concern about this area and the amount of litter affecting people and wildlife.

Litter is an area embedded within the Action Plan as one of the school’s three main areas of Eco-Schools work, and pupils had been involved in a rota of litter picking within the school already, but the wider community focus of this campaign really pulled the community together.

The council supplied litter picking equipment. Pupils had experiences in literacy through advertising the event, performing assemblies and communicating via letters and email with outside parties, including the Currie Balerno News.

In numeracy pupils weighed litter collected and in ICT they developed presentations for the whole school, written pieces for the school website and wrote newspaper articles and letters.

They have thought about the HWB implications of litter and linked all of this into the Global Goals for Sustainable Development specifically through Goals: 6, 11, 14 & 15, and shared this with the rest of the school.