At the British International School’s Puxi campus, there are efforts across both our primary and secondary schools to incorporate a greater sense of environmental-based learning into what we do inside and outside the classroom.

Student-led Eco Committees have conducted audits on energy use and waste production in order to create targets to minimize these in the future. Following this, a paper recycling system was introduced, along with an awareness campaign called “Stop, Switch, Save.” We were awarded the UK Eco School’s Bronze Award two years ago for this work and we hope to continue with our environmental improvement campaign in the coming years. This really is a community effort, requiring parents, teachers, students, guards and kitchen staff to all work together.

A success story in our secondary school has been the introduction of a small garden site with eight raised beds to grow herbs and some seasonal vegetables. In the primary school, a roof garden allows students to grow vegetables which they can eat at home. Our biggest challenge to keeping the garden growing is the long, hot Shanghai summer holidays when most of our community is away. However, during that time, our cleaning and kitchen staff have been taking care of the garden for us.

(Dan Grocott is head of Geography at British International School Shanghai, Puxi.)