Administrative Assistant Judi Allbury started to organise paper recycling in the school on her own initiative, and a Global Action Plan training day in February 2006 kick-started the school’s waste reduction programme.

The School Council was considering projects to get involved with when Ms Allbury suggested the London Schools Environment Award. They were very keen and she worked with them to get it started. “The whole thing is totally student-led and I’m there in case they get stuck,” she said. It has now become so big that they formed an Eco Council that focuses solely on sustainability initiatives.

The school has excelled at the three R’s, reduce, reuse, recycle. They have reduced their paper consumption by photocopying and printing double-sided. They recycle ink cartridges, plastic, mobile phones, Christmas cards, spectacles and CDs and offer a recycling service for local businesses including the BBC and primary schools. They have made great efforts to reduce the amount of stationery they use by making sure they are not wasting anything, and they reuse and recycle. They also bought a recycle bin for their kitchen and they now compost kitchen scraps to reduce their food waste. “Not wasting things has become embedded in our ethos and we take better care of things now,” said Judi.

“There are so many small things we can do and they are all achievable in a day,” said student Sam Bradley. Philanthropic recycling is employed by the school - old computers are donated to Computer Aid International and clothes are sent to developing world organisations. Students get reward points for donating their clothes, which they can use to buy recycled products.

As The City of London Academy is a brand new school the building structure was sound, so changing the behaviour of the people inside became the focus. Ms Allbury said the key to this is making adaptations easy for everyone to give solutions and have a chance to make a difference so that it becomes second nature.

The students have fantastic support from the top. The Principal of the school likes to be updated regularly on the school’s sustainability progress. The Student Council gives presentations to the governors regularly. “The Principal hardly ever says we cannot do something. He sees our eco-friendliness as a badge of honour,” said student Jack Cassidy. Southwark Council has also been very supportive.

Jo Green, Sustainable Education Officer at Southwark Council said: “Pupil involvement is key to getting a green Eco Schools flag and is something that most schools find very hard to enable. The school should be congratulated for facilitating such genuine participation by the students.”

Thanks to their efforts, the school now recycles 65% of their waste. The school has gone from using 25-30 boxes of paper per week to ten, which saves them money as well as saving trees. At the start of the waste programme an audit revealed they were producing 40.62 kgs of waste per day. Within a year that was reduced to 17.2kgs per day, a reduction of 57.6%.

The Body Shop visited the school and Debbie Osborne, Grants Manager, wrote in a letter to the school following a visit: “We were very impressed by the school’s waste reduction and recycling initiatives and were, I have to admit, slightly embarrassed to realise that our own practices need a bit of brushing up!”

Outside the school grounds there have been benefits as well, the school has built stronger links with the community through the Borough-led Junior Street Leaders scheme. When plans were being made for the school to be built there was initially a lot of resistance within the local community. ”I think we’ve really turned that around and the local community has been quite surprised at how much we’ve achieved. I think they’re happy to have us here now,” said Jack.

The Eco Council wanted gardeners to help convert a piece of land into a garden with a pond and plants so they interviewed local community groups and companies and chose to work with Lever Market Residents Organisation who are now working on regenerating this piece of land. The gardeners really enjoy it and like working with the students. One day they even bought an old bird box in that they had found and donated it to the school.

They have had great success but there have certainly been hurdles for the school to leap along the way. Initially the premises staff were resistant to eco-initiatives and many teachers were reluctant to get involved as it seemed to be more work to do on top of an already packed schedule. However, the opposite proved true – there is now less rubbish to discard and departments have saved money, reducing photocopies and printing double-sided has halved their paper budgets.

The Academy's Eco Council has been very successful, achieving everything necessary for their schools environment award within six months. Ms Allbury emphasised, however, that the building was brand new, and an older school might face more of a challenge. She advised other schools to focus on a few things and make sure they are properly implemented before adding other initiatives with time.

The Academy Eco Council is planning to get solar panels and a wind turbine. They would also like to switch to a green energy company but have found this is difficult since their energy use is so high that they have trouble sourcing a supplier. A biodiversity garden is currently being developed and they want to earn an Eco Schools Green Flag.