​The 2021/22 school year saw the beginning of our attempt to secure a Green Flag for Dunhill NS.
Since then we have been making great strides and have dramatically reduced our waste.
We hope to be awarded the Litter and Waste flag this year.

We greatly appreciate the efforts of all our students and parents in our endeavour.
In order to reduce our waste, action was taken on school lunches.

Just a reminder of what we have done so far:
  • cling film has been banned entirely from school lunchboxes
  • we ask that Frubes or similar are not included in lunchboxes (but if a child does bring one, they MUST bring the wrapper home for binning)
  • we ask that children bring Cheese Dipper pots home for binning (Dairylea or similar). We discovered that the cheese mixture in the pots has been clogging our drains as pupils were doing their best to clean out the pots before putting them in the recycling bins
  • we have returned to using towels in bathrooms, no more paper

Members of our Green Schools committee (made up of staff and pupils) have conducted a litter survey. The results are currently being graphed and will be published here once complete.

Our daily Litter Pick in the school yard is becoming less of a chore every day. This is thanks to the great efforts being made by our pupils to be extra conscientious of their litter and making sure to use the correct bins.

The next event on our Green Schools calendar is our Spring Clean day. This will take place (weather permitting) on Tuesday February 21st and we will be inviting any parents or members of the local community who can help on the day to come along while we do our best to clean up any litter from the roads and hedges local to our school. Information about class times and location was put on our school Facebook page.

We were delighted to receive 20 new Litter Pickers from Waterford County Council for use in our Spring Clean.
Ten of these are on loan and ten can be kept by the school after the day.

UPDATES
Our Spring Clean Day was a great success! Despite a damp start, we all got out and managed to fill several large black sacks with rubbish found on the roadsides around village. Infants did a great job in the yard and school surroundings. 1st and 2nd Class then headed over towards the church. They found lots of litter hiding under hedges on the way. In the graveyard they picked up lots of old artificial flowers, broken pots and so on. They also found more litter on the road down to Harney's.
Mr Hally's 3rd and 4th Class went along the front of the school and the Community Hall and found plenty to fill their sacks. Finally, Mr Cooper's 5th and 6th Classes went up the hill beside the school and once again found lots of litter hiding on the roadsides and under hedges. 
Many pupils really found the day eye-opening. A seemingly tidy litter-free roadside could actually be hiding lots of rubbish which would take hundreds if not thousands of years to decompose. We talked a lot about how it is the responsibility of everyone to work together to make our world litter-free.
Following our Spring Clean, 10 litter pickers were gratefully returned to the Council.

At the end of February, we submitted our Green Flag application. We are currently awaiting a visit from an assessor who will see first-hand all of our efforts and hard work. Watch this space for updates!