Green Schools Programme at Sacred Heart
Sacred Heart Goes Green
Sacred Heart Secondary School strives for a more environmentally friendly and energy efficient school environment.
Currently our Transition Year Green Schools class are campaigning to reduce the amount of single usage cups being thrown away. We are giving our peers the opportunity to buy reasonably priced reusable cups, as opposed to paper cups.
Wednesday, the 17th of October sees the launch of our Sacred Heart Single-use Cup Campaign. We will be selling an array of reusable cups to students in the Ref at morning break and lunch time. These cups will be priced at €3 each. For those that do not wish to buy a reusable cup, we are promoting the idea of students bringing in their own cups, to use when purchasing tea or soup in school, through posters and announcements.
Since the invention of plastic, we have become a disposable society. We find it very convenient to use something once and then dispose of it when we no longer need it, but people do not realise the consequences of doing so. People are given the illusion that once a coffee cup or any kind of waste is out of our sight, it's not our problem anymore. This is not true. These cups are not bio-degradable, therefore they end up on landfill, causing pollution and harm to the ecosystem. The plastic lining which makes these cups waterproof prevents them from being recycled.
As many as six single use coffee cups are disposed of every second in Ireland, which results in a lot of non-recyclable waste in the form of 528,000 single use cups every day. This school alone uses over 80 disposable cups per day, which adds up to 400 cups per week and 1,600 cups per month. This is not a figure we are proud of.
We want to make students more aware of the consequences of using these cups excessively, and show them the environmental benefits of using re-usable cups instead. As a class, we believe in this cause and would love for our school community to be even more environmentally friendly, and this is one of the first steps in the process!
So, step up and participate. Buy our cups on the 17th and do your bit to save the environment for our future!