Schools
The students attending the 12 Primary and Secondary schools located in Ennis play an integral role in the ongoing activities of Ennis Tidy Towns. The committee believe strongly that their involvement is critical for the future of the town.
The primary focus of Ennis Tidy Towns is to instil a sense of civic pride and social conscious among the young people attending our local schools.
Environmental Patrol Wardens regularly visit schools in the town, to educate, raise awareness and to encourage school children to keep their school and surrounding area clean and litter free. An 10 minute DVD was produced by Ennis Town Council, Ennis Tidy Towns, 3 primary schools and Westfields Residents Group. The DVD aims to increase awareness of litter in the town centre.
To date we have been overwhelmed by the initiatives undertaken by the students and supported by their teachers and parents and would like to congratulate all for their hard work and dedication.
Green Schools
Green-Schools, known internationally as Eco-Schools, is an international environmental education programme, environmental management system and award scheme that promotes and acknowledges long-term, whole school action for the environment.
Unlike a once-off project, it is a long-term programme that introduces participants (students, teachers, parents and the wider community) to the concept of an environmental management system. However, Green-Schools is far more than just an environmental management system. It fosters a strong sense of citizenship and leadership among participants that spreads far outside the school into the wider community. It also promotes a strong sense of teamwork among teachers, students and the wider community to reach a common high level goal. It flattens and democratises school management structures. It brings children into the decision-making process and makes them responsible for their decision and actions. In fact it could be best described as being ‘more than the sum of its parts’.
The aim of Green-Schools is to increase students’ and participant awareness of environmental issues through classroom studies and to transfer this knowledge into positive environmental action in the school and also in the wider community. Schools that have successfully completed all the elements of the programme are awarded the ‘Green-Flag’. This award has now become a well-recognised Eco-Label. The award has to be renewed every two years.
For more information on Green-Schools in Ireland click here www.greenschoolsireland.org
Gum Litter Taskforce
The Gum Litter Taskforce (GLT) is part of a joint initiative which aims to achieve a long-term solution to irresponsible chewing gum disposal. The GLT is charged with developing and implementing an Action Programme to tackle gum litter in the most sustainable way – by changing behaviour, the root cause of the issue.
A campaign has been developed which will incorporate a set of integrated initiatives including education, raising awareness and measures to ensure the greater visibility of penalties for littering. Members of the GLT include representatives of the chewing gum industry; Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government; Food and Drink Industry Ireland; Department of Education and Science; ENFO; ECO UNESCO; Foroige and local authority representatives.
Ennis Tidy Towns Works with The Gum Litter Taskforce, and the Town Council, to raise awareness of gum as litter. Ennis Tidy Towns committee has worked , and will continue to work closely with the council in order to raise awareness of gum litter in the community. The committee got involved at an early stage and worked with the council in generating an awareness campaign and designing street signage. The Gum Litter Task Force (GLT) logo will be used for posters and distributed by committee members during school visits.
Ennis Tidy Towns has a number of teachers involved in the committee who will spearhead this project in the schools. Ennis Town Council has also committed to visit every class and get the GLT message out. As part of our awareness building campaign we hold art competitions, distribute merchandise with the GLT message and hold classroom debates about the importance of disposing of your gum correctly. Our theme for this year will be “chewing gum litter”, and prizes will be given out at our local awards.
We are also engaged in an important and useful study on gum deposits and have counted chewing gum deposits in different locations in Ennis. We are particularly interested in results derived from ” Chapel Lane ” which has recently being refurbished and was completely repaved. We will continue to monitor this area to determine levels of gum litter at various stages of our campaign to see how effective our awareness campaign is. This experiment will also add as an interesting exercise to discuss when visiting schools.
We have also written to all residential groups asking them to discuss the GLT message with the residents, and their children with a view to raising awareness that gum is litter, and the only sustainable way of getting rid of the problem is through education.
Local retailers are also on board and Ennis Chamber of Commerce has emailed all their members asking them to place a GLT poster on their shop/ business window, for the duration of the GLT campaign. Posters will be displayed in English, Irish and Polish to facilitate our growing Polish population.
For more information on this national initiative visit www.gumlittertaskforce.ie
