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Members of the award-winning SCCS eco committee beside the £30,000 solar panels |
Eco-aware students take to the rooftops
£30k solar panels are part of school’s green policies
FEW schools can lay claim to having an orangutan in their care or hippos in their toilets, but when it comes to saving the environment, South Camden Community School (SCCS) is no ordinary school.
Last week, students from the 100-strong SCCS eco committee raised the green credentials of the Somers Town secondary school by another notch with state-of-the-art solar panels.
The school in Chalton Street already boasts a silver Eco-Schools certificate for its recycling, composting, energy auditing, sponsored litter picking, vociferous letter writing campaigns, drama workshops and a partnership with Camley Street Nature Reserve.
Not content with that, they also sponsor a Bornean orangutan called Etin and have water-saving “hippo” devices in all their toilets.
Now, with the rooftop addition of the £30,000 solar panels – funded by the Energy Savings Trust and EDF Energy after two years of tireless fund-raising – SCCS has gold in its sights.
Although the winter sun leaves something to be desired, the 40 solar panels will provide enough energy to power all the lighting used in the 1,000-student school in Chalton Street.
Elizabeth Swann, a member of the school’s eco committee, said: “I never used to know what a solar panel was. We don’t want the world to be polluted but apart from recycling we’ve never really been told how stop it.
“We hear so much about global warming but we don’t know how to stop it. It’s very important because no one wants the world to die quite yet.”
Fellow pupil Mohammed Rayhan Sheikh added: “It saves the school money so they can spend it on trips for us.”
SCCS is one of a host of Camden schools that have made environmental leaps and bounds in recent months.
Torriano Junior School installed solar thermal panels on its roof in October to convert the sun’s energy into a hot- water supply. A rainwater harvesting system that filters rainwater from the roof to flush the school’s toilets is also in operation, saving money as well as the environment.
Between Torriano’s rainwater scheme and SCCS’s solar panels, the gauntlet has been thrown down to the rest of the borough – and things in Camden can only get greener. |
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