Pupils from Bells Brae School’s took part in a tree planting project on Friday 22 June within the school grounds. Lerwick Port Authority donated twenty trees for the site, as an initiative to offset its annual paper usage.
Bells Brae School’s Eco Committee which has overseen the project, consists of twelve children, two pupils from each P2 – P7 class. Members take responsibility for improving their school grounds and organising various initiatives such as poster campaigns promoting litter free playgrounds and seed planting to make the school grounds more attractive.
Eco committee teacher, Sophie Thouless said “The pupils involved with the Eco Committee are all very passionate about the environment and are excited about creating a new habitat to encourage birds and insects which they can watch growing a bit more each year.”
Stuart Wadley, the Authority’s HSEQ Manager, commented “We are always looking for ways to make our operations more environmentally friendly and this initiative also gives us the opportunity to support the school pupils to achieve their own environmental improvements.”
The tree planting was assisted by Paul Goddard, Woodlands Foreman from Shetland Amenity Trust who said: “This LPA initiative shows how simple it is for local businesses to be more environmentally conscious. The pupils were all so enthusiastic when planting the trees; it would be great to see more if this kind of collaboration.”
Examples of other Lerwick Port Authority environmental initiatives include recently winning a Shetland Environmental Award for a fendering project diverting 86 tonnes of tyres from landfill, oil sampling, fuel monitoring, LED lighting and marine waste recovery.
