SUSTAINABILITY

SUSTAINABILITY AT NLCS

At North London, we are committed to becoming Carbon Net-Zero by 2030 and continually strive to minimise our impact on the environment and our local neighbourhood.

Led by the School’s Environment Committee, which consists of student representatives and staff, the School’s Environment Strategy outlines our commitment to become a leading eco-school. It has been impressive to see students taking the lead on the School’s ‘Green’ priorities, organising an extensive programme of activities throughout the year.

Our form Eco-Reps have worked hard this year to embed our sustainability work into the day to day of school life. They led a #FastFashionFreeFebruary campaign, including a collaboration with NLCS Jeju and NLCS Dubai, and a #NoMowMay campaign.

NLCS continues to play an active role in the London Schools Eco-Network and the UK Schools Sustainability Network. Our Year 12 students regularly chair London Schools Eco-Network meetings attended by schools across London, including Highgate, St Paul’s Girls’ School, City of London Boys and Girls and London Academy of Excellence Tottenham. Two Year 12 students represented the London Schools Eco-Network at the UK Schools Sustainability Network meetings, and students have attended a variety of high-profile events, including a mock International Climate Conference with InterClimate Network and a bespoke climate solutions workshop by Project Drawdown. ECO STEAM AWARDS

YEAR 12 ENVIRONMENT AWARENESS SOCIETY

The Year 12 Environment Awareness Society has worked with Junior School students to discuss campaigns and share ideas. To support our efforts to reduce food waste at NLCS, the society created a video to highlight the issue. During the Summer Festival, they ran a collaborative game called Carbon City Zero encouraging students to work together to design a city whilst balancing carbon budgets.

Five groups of Upper School and Sixth Form students took part in an awards programme to work with the School to help achieve our sustainability goals. The groups looked at sustainability tech such as kinetic tiles, at the benefits and drawbacks of outdoor learning, at our food waste and ways to minimise it, as well as researching strategies that will encourage long-term changes in behaviour. ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE

Our NLCS Environment Committee has been working on the targets outlined in our School’s Environment Strategy. Staff from the Junior and Senior Schools have completed the AimHi Climate Course for Teachers to ensure we bring the climate crisis into the classroom. The Committee has been encouraging parents to sign up to the Homerun app to minimise traffic on and around the school site and ensure air travel for school trips occurs only when essential.

Each group produced an industry-standard report, presenting their data collection, analysis, and proposed solutions’ costs and benefits. They presented their findings to a panel of staff and demonstrated how thoroughly they had analysed the data and immersed themselves into their research and how knowledgeable they had become about the feasibility of the proposed solutions and their potential impact on our school community.

IDEAS HUB

Sustainability will play a significant part in our IDEAS Hub, opening at Canons in 2024. We have been working with the team at Stanford University so that we build one of the country’s leading science, engineering, technology & innovation hubs at NLCS, which gives students opportunities to work with some of the leading innovators, organisations and businesses across fintech, healthtech, smart tech and biotech. YOUTH CLIMATE SUMMIT

News of the School’s sustainability agenda reached the Daily Telegraph in November in an article about the Youth Climate Summit, an event created as a response to the cancelling of the 2020 UN COP. Not wishing for the climate crisis to slip off the agenda, students set about planning a virtual climate conference to bring together universities, politicians, activists, charities and - most importantly - schools and children. Members of our senior school were involved in the planning and delivery of this important event asking questions about careers to a panel at the forefront of sustainability, talking about the establishment of the London Schools Eco-Network and presenting a talk all about marine pollution.