• Created a whole school Eco Committee. Secondary students meet at 12pm on Thursdays and Primary students meet at 2.45pm on Tuesdays. Everyone is welcome.
• Appointed Eco Ambassadors to drive change and share our successes with their year groups and the wider BSAK/UAE community. Eco Ambassadors are students in years 3-13 and adult representatives in Nursery-year 2.
• Created a twitter account to share all the great stuff we do: @BSAKeco
• Completed an Environmental Review of the school.
• Created an Action Plan and secured a Budget.
• Agreed a whole school plan which will focus on Marine Life, School Grounds and Waste with a view to achieving our Eco Schools Bronze Award by the end of the academic year. (Update: aiming for Green Flag)
• Completed a Nurdle Hunt with NYUAD on Saadiyat Beach. Completed an additional Nurdle Hunt with Park Hyatt Saadiyat.
• Ran a stall at the International Fete and educated our BSAK community by sharing information about what we’ve found out so far about our environment.
• Met with the architects designing the new primary dining hall to discuss how the build can be eco-friendly.
• Worked with the Global Leaders to successfully agree that there will be a water filtration unit in the new primary dining hall meaning no plastic water barrels. 
• Took part in the Emirates Environmental Group initiative to collect and recycle aluminum drinks cans, glass bottles, PET 1 and 2 plastic and paper/card.
• Met Dr Jane Goodall as part of the Roots and Shoots programme.
• Removed all single use plastic cups from the school premises in October 2018.
• Secondary Eco Ambassadors met with manager of Food Nation to discuss use of excessive packaging - bamboo cutlery is now used instead of plastic and all packaging is reduced plastic with a view to improving this further.
• Removal of all plastic cutlery in secondary staff room and replaced with metal cutlery. 
• Led a primary Eco House competition. This involved parents, students and staff from our community tweeting their eco-friendly suggestions. See photos on twitter.
• Secondary students encouraged to make an Eco Resolution.
• Eco Ambassadors delivered an assembly to years 7-13 explaining the issues with single-use plastic and encouraging everyone to carry a water bottle.
• Notice board created in primary sharing all our wonderful achievements with our community. 
• Took part in the EEG initiative to collect aluminium cans.
• Pledged to collect a minimum amount of glass, paper, plastic and aluminium for EEG initiative.
• Global Leaders assembly regarding Earth Hour. Took part in Earth Hour across the school.
• 90 bags of clothes recycled for the Red Cross to distribute to Syrian refugees.
• Completed the Useless Utensils campaign with AZRAQ.
• Zero Waste talk - 8.10.19. Delivered to Eco Ambassadors across primary and secondary. 
• Simply Bottles presentation - January 2020.
• Flip The Switch campaign to reduce electricity consumption.
• Presentation by Sarah from DGrade Dubai on Simply Bottles recycling campaign.
• Simply Bottles Initiative adopted in primary (November 2019) with a view to secondary starting in January 2020.
• 2019-2020 focus on sustainability and reducing consumption - Flip the Switch and Simply Bottles recycling campaign. 
• Eco Trip to plant native ghaf trees on Saadiyat Golf Course - 5.12.19. 
• 3rd BSAK nurdle hunt with NYUAD completed on 10.11.19 at Jumeirah Saadiyat. Over 23000 nurdles collected in 45 minutes. 
• Primary Eco Week in January 2020. 
• Removed one time use plastic cups and are encouraging the use of reusable water bottles around the community.
• Powerpoints sent out to tutor groups for all students to create an Eco-Resolution in January.
• Year 5 pupils have been recycling batteries.
• Maths department have introduced annual lessons to teach KS3 pupils how to plot graphs using data from our annual carbon dioxide emissions, to show the magnitude of this problem.
• Busy Bees Bus visited us. Pupils were able to recognise the importance of conservation of animals, and specifically, how to protect bee’s habitats.
• Planning to have a plastic free national day, encouraging students to bring in their own plates and utensils as an alternative to one time use plastics.
• Multiple secondary ambassadors have designed posters to raise awareness about environmental issues.
• Year 9 English lessons have made the year group think about what an effective Eco-Code for the school would be. They then split into groups and each created one.
• Campaign about reducing BSAK’s paper consumption. We used 61,471 less pieces of paper this September compared to last year.
• Encouraged a local restaurant to replace their plastic ice cream spoons with bamboo ones.
• Food Nation pledged to remove plastic drinks bottles during Eco Week and will work with us to develop a plastic free service in the future. 
• Year 3 Bumblesnouts assembly raised awareness of environmental concerns. 
• Raised over 12,000 dirhams to support the charities collecting for the Australian Bushfires. 
• Waste-free lunchbox week.
• All primary students have adopted an Eco Pledge (Eco Week).
• BSAK are trialling two new water filtration systems that will support our mission to be more sustainable. 
• Attended the 2020 Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots awards. 
• Won 9 certificates in the Environmental Agency Abu Dhabi turtle video competition (March 2020).  
• Completed a House Competition with Simply Bottles (Nov. 2020)
• Created a whole school Eco Code.
• Welcomed new Eco Ambassadors across the school for 2020-2021. 
• BSAK Global Goals Public Speaking Competition (100 students across the UAE participated)
• Collected 180kg of PET1 plastic to be recycled by EEG in December 2020.
• 2022 BSAK Campaign to raise awareness of 'no more plastic bags' in Abu Dhabi supermarkets.
• 2022 World Environment Day initiatives.
• Food Nation reusable cup campaign.
• 2022 Reinforcement of 'no more plastic bottles in school'. 
• Pre-loved school uniform sale - coming soon

Sustainable development is a strategic goal at BSAK and through our passionate leadership team and supportive community, we have been able to embed environmental action into every level of the School and out into our wider community. Through a cascade of leadership roles at staff and student levels across all year groups, we have set targets and achieved them, and implemented eco-friendly practices into daily life, proactively advocating and celebrating every success through our communication channels.  

At BSAK we have adapted as many relevant topics that are covered by the British curriculum to our local environment, with green learning programmes. For example in Primary the Year 3 humanities curriculum includes an annual eco assembly inspired by Bee Bus, learning about the UAE environment and indiginous wildlife, plastic waste, marine life, deforestation, pollution, litter and sustainability. Their assembly is shared with parents and all school staff. The Year 5 curriculum is based on knowledge and understanding of the world, and here they are learning about different types of plastic, recycling and the plastic problem, and this inspired our whole school plastic recycling campaign. The maths department introduced annual lessons on plotting graphs using data from annual CO2 emissions, to show the magnitude of the problem. In the Secondary school the physics and biology curricula cover renewable and non-renewable energy sources, and this is made relevant to our students with notice boards, posters, presentations, and video competitions. At A level and GCSE, geography, biology, physics and chemistry topics cover data, tables and graphs to analyse climate change, and present ways to reduce it. This resulted in our students running a campaign to put this into action in our school and community.   These topics are also reinforced across many additional co-curricular activities outside the classroom, such as competitions, assemblies, leadership opportunities, community engagement, and influencing infrastructure and environment. 

Our Global Social Leaders worked with architects in 2019 to design a sustainable primary dining hall. They researched water filtration units to be trialled in 2022 and initiated e-waste recycling and donation efforts.

They ran an online competition for the whole of Abu Dhabi on the UN Global Goals and this saw over 120 students deliver speeches on how we can work together to make these aims a reality.

We have a robust Eco-Committee across Primary and Secondary that is led by Eco Ambassadors from Year 3-13. They have ensured that our cafeteria and cafe uses recycled materials and put a stop to single use plastic items, banning plastic cups. Eco Boards surround the school and awareness campaigns about Zero Waste UAE are delivered during assemblies and through our social media. This led to a community Twitter campaign, recycling initiatives with DGrade Dubai and Emirate Environmental Group and we invited Zero Waste UAE and EEAD to run assemblies. The outcome was 180Kg of PET1 plastic recycled in December 2020.  We ran an Eco week and celebrated Glocal Earth day. Events were held every day including waste free lunch boxes, making Eco pledges, running recycling competitions, and our eco ambassadors worked closely with catering to remove all plastic for a week. 

Our students conducted an environmental review in 2019 and based on these results the School set targets and an action plan to tangibly impact our homes, school and community. 

1/ To reduce waste and learn about the impact of waste, students engaged in campaigns to develop expertise in monitoring and minimising our energy and water consumption. Our Secondary School Global Social Leaders (GSL) led the schoolwide Flip the Switch Campaign to ensure that all staff and students are thoughtful in their use of resources, leading to a demonstrable 13% reduction in use. 

2/ To learn more about our UAE marine and coast line and to share this with our BSAK community we have developed expertise in our environment, and now carry out the following: Nurdle hunts, EcoVenture beach clean ups, share our findings with the school community, learn from outside speakers about the UAE and global marine issues - EAAD and Araq to name just two.  We became a Azraq member school, we won an Environmental Agency Abu Dhabi competition and were a finalist for Roots and Shoots UAE with Jane Goodall. Year 5 added Coastlines to their Science curriculum. To learn more about our heritage in the UAE and the local wildlife and flora / fauna, our students have also participated in planting Ghaf trees on Saadiyat Island. 

We were recently honoured to hit the global headlines when some of our students met Prince William on his recent tour of the UAE.  Read this amazing story here:  https://bit.ly/3HJ9FEZ