Greenwood Independent School, Plettenberg Bay, South Africa

Eco Schools Creating a love and awareness of the environment in children was one of the basic principles Greenwood Independent Primary School was founded on. The school is registered with the Eco-Schools program which is supported by the WWF-SA and WESSA and endorsed by the Department of Education. This international program assists schools in encouraging curriculum-based action for a healthy environment. The school involved chooses three focus areas and develops lesson plans; school improvement plans and records their progress in a portfolio. At the end of each year the portfolios are assessed and successful schools are awarded a green flag. As one of over 15 000 schools in this initiative world wide, Greenwood is proud to have earned a flag for two years in a row and hopes to win an international flag next year.

Greenwood WINS the eta 2011 Young Designers Category

Eskom and the Department of Energy are celebrating the 22nd Annual eta Awards. The aim of the eta Awards is to reward the proven application of sound energy efficiency principles in the commercial, industrial, residential, agricultural and education sectors. Energy efficiency is part of Eskom’s drive to ensure a sustainable electricity supply into the future. Given the significant emphasis place on energy efficiency by the Government of SA, the Minister of Energy is the official patron of the eta Awards.

Greenwood Independent School participates in WESSA’s Energy and Sustainability Programme, which is funded by ESKOM. The young team at Greenwood, in Plettenberg Bay, examined the relationship between the climate, building design and energy usage. Their aim was to see what they could do, through research and recommendations, to influence local municipality officials to more efficiently design and build their RDP houses, for maximum energy efficiency.

The team looked at how RDP houses are currently designed, taking field trips to local townships to look at house construction and to identify ways to make them more energy efficient. Through a series of experiments back at school, they found that RDP houses had no insulation meaning that precious heat would escape through the roofs and windows heat would escape through the roofs and windows, and so alternative, often more dangerous forms of heating would have to be used such as paraffin heaters, often the source of house fires. The team also found that those built facing north had a temperature rise of 6 degrees internally, compared with their west-facing equivalents, which saw no temperature rise at all.

This innovative young team of designers from Greenwood Independent School were invited to visit their local mayor to present their research findings who informed them that their research and recommendations were a real ‘eye opener’ to him personally. He added that it would probably change the way RDP houses in the local area would be built in the future. In fact, new RDP houses scheduled to be built in January and February of next year will be taking into account the findings of the research. So, these young designers have already made a huge impact on their local environment and on the future lives of township residents.

Well done Greenwood!!

ESKOM’S ETA AWARDS 2010

Eskom and the Department of Energy have for the past 20 years rewarded excellence in the field of energy efficiency. The purpose of the ETA Awards is to reward exceptional effort in the more efficient use of energy by individuals, students, companies or other institutions. All of the awards comprise a cash amount of R30 000 for the winner in each category and R5 000 for each of the two runners-up in each category.

We were recently notified that GREENWOOD INDEPENDENT SCHOOL is one of the 5 FINALISTS in the Young Designers Category for their “Keep a Chill on Global Warming” entry! Refrigerators are one of our households biggest consumers of electricity and, with the help of Susan Donald, they have constructed an eco fridge, which does not use any electricity! This is the latest of our energy saving projects which started last year with our solar water heater. The fridge works on the principle of evaporation, just as the Zeer clay pots do. However it is bigger, uses easily obtained and inexpensive materials, which we can get at the local hardware store. (Shade cloth, netting and sand.) The fridge is being used to keep milk, water and lunchboxes cold—and in tests, lowered the temperature of liquids by between 8 and 10 degrees.