Let the children lead: growing greener schools and communities

Top takeaways

• Start small, think big. Begin with one manageable project, like tackling waste or starting a small eco-crew. Quick wins build momentum and confidence.
• Let pupils lead. When children take ownership – whether through eco audits, product design, or campaigns – the learning sticks, and they’ll get others involved. 
• Make it cross-curricular. Environmental learning isn’t an “extra.” It weaves naturally through maths, literacy, science, and geography – like a golden thread.
• Use enquiry to inspire. Frame lessons around big, open questions (“How can we keep our oceans beautiful?”) and follow where pupils’ curiosity leads.
• Waste is everyone’s way in. From stationery refills to banning glitter, small changes cut costs and engage the whole school community – site staff, teachers, families included.
  

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Edd Moore is an eco-schools champion. As a teacher he led his primary school to a number of awards, including the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Educational Institution of the Year. Edd is the author of 100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Greener School, and combines providing eco-support to schools with his role as Head of Education at Green Schools Project. 

How did you first get involved in environmental education? 

It was the first year of my teaching. Back then it was like your NQT year, and the school that I was at had these fabulous grounds, but didn't have a school garden. And I just couldn't understand why children weren't outside, getting close to nature. And that children just literally did not know where their food came from. They thought it came from the supermarket. 

So, off I went, and I designed and built the first school garden and got children outside, growing all types of vegetables through the seasons. And then harvesting those fruits and vegetables, which we eventually took down to sell at the local town market. 

Then children are using their weighing skills, their money skills, their communication skills. And it went from there. More gardens came and were built. 

How did it go further? 

So we went for the Eco-Schools Green Flag Award. And it sort of snowballed from there. Eco-Schools gave us the structure so we could implement environmental topics continuously through our curriculum. And the children came up with an idea to make eco-products. So we took part in the National Fiver Challenge competition, and we decided to go down more of an eco-approach, rather than the standard making and selling cakes.

The children came up with really good ideas. They came up with Spick and Span, which was a cleaning agent, which could literally clean anything, made out of coconut oil and bicarbonate of soda. They came up with Waxtastic: No Plastic, which is an alternative to cling film using beeswax wraps.

We won the national awards for these products, and we made some good money too. Children were out there selling these products, and they weren't standing behind a table. They were out. I got salespeople from car lots and estate agents come in and actually teach them how to sell properly.

The children then used those skills to go out and have the confidence to go up to people and give them a 20 second pitch of why they should be buying their product. We made about £5,000, which went back into our nature area within the school.

Campaign after campaign then started coming. We did a single-use plastic campaign within the school, and that pretty much put us on the national stage. And then many more, including a deposit return scheme which is still going on now.

What’s your approach to teaching children and young people about climate-change? 

In my teaching, I'm always starting with an enquiry based question. Is it worth saving the wonders of the natural wonders of the world? How can we keep our oceans looking beautiful? How can we keep biodiversity thriving so we can eat and have fabulous food? 

We take the learning from there; we ask the children what their prior knowledge is in these topics. And then I just follow the children's learning. I follow where their interest goes. There is some scaffolding further down the school for younger children, helping them to guide them to an ending point.

But, most of the time it's freely done. It's all interlinked, running down every curriculum subject like a golden thread. It's got literacy, maths, geography, history, science, all intertwined together. And a lot of it is getting outside, connecting with nature, getting experts in, going and visiting lovely attractions. Most of the time it's free.

We encourage families and their children to go and experience these places at weekends too, to take their learning further, making sure that it's open for all and everybody can access these wonderful places. Every time I give a recommendation, I try to really make sure that there's no cost involved and that every family can experience the same opportunity.

What’s a good way to get started with environmental education and activity? 

A good place to start is to get an eco crew together. Get a group of children together, and do an audit of your school.

Do an audit of what you're doing well, what you need to improve on. There's lots of audit templates available online; take a look at organisations like Eco Schools, Transform Our World or Climate Friendly Schools to get started.

And then once you've got that, draw up an action plan of what you need to improve on. Put it under three environmental headings. It could be waste, could be litter, could be biodiversity, school grounds, transport. And then go from there. Get the children to lead these projects, get the children's ideas. It's really important that we have children leading.

It's not your group. You are there to mentor and coach and facilitate. Make sure that children are there leading on these projects, because if they're leading, then they're more likely to want to carry it on and encourage teachers, the community and their families to get involved too.

I always think that waste is a really good topic to start with first, because it's so broad. It's never-ending! You can do a litter pick. You can go out and make your school single-use plastic free. You go out and make your town single-use plastic free.

You can look at the paper wastage that you're creating. You could look at composting. Loads of people within schools forget about stationary and how they could be reducing the amount of stationary that they buy in. 

Are there ways that you could get a refill glue stick? Are there ways that you could refill a whiteboard pen so you're not throwing away all that plastic all the time? There are lots of answers out there on social media, in books too. You can find answers to all these things. 

Tell us about your book, 100 ideas for primary teachers

100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Greener School, is based on a hundred ideas that I tried and tested throughout my 13 years of teaching. It has a forward by Dr. Jane Goodall, and it's published by Bloomsbury. It has the support of many other organisations like Eco-Schools, Let's Go Zero, Climate Ambassadors as well. And it's a fantastic resource to encourage schools and teachers to start taking action on climate change.

It's not just for primary school teachers. It could be used by everybody. Families, scouts, guides, brownies, secondary school teachers. Everybody can use it in some way. 

You can take just one idea, and then there are suggestions for taking things further if you want to. So wherever you're at in your journey, there's something for you. It's pretty much endless!

Waste as a way in

The waste factor involves everyone. It’s a way to get everyone involved: site managers, caretakers, headteachers. Schools are so tight with budgets at the moment, that they need to find quick wins. And this is a quick win: reduce your waste, reduce your paper, your recycling, have a little bit more of a thought about what resources you're bringing in.

Having a ban on glitter, for example, or finding other ways that you can reduce the cost and by refilling or re-using is always a good way. Those Rs are always a good way to start: refuse, reduce, reuse, refill, repair. Recycle is now way down the list. 

Those are the things that we need to be focusing on in schools. I always feel that stationary is an easy quick win that everybody forgets about. 

Tell us about an impactful project 

I did a biodiversity project, looking at wild flowers, and I wanted to teach the children about what they could find within the school grounds. So they'd be able to name the wild flowers, the trees, insects and everything. But then it just steamrolled. We had children outside, journalling and drawing pictures and annotating what they saw.

We asked ‘I wonder’ questions. I wonder why the plant has six petals? I wonder why it's that colour? Then we read a book together in class where the main character enjoyed a disused car park, and she ended up turning it into a beautiful wildflower meadow.

Then the children said, ‘can't we do that Mr. Moore? Can we do that?’ So, we found a bare piece of land near our school. We asked the Duchy who owned the land at the time, and Dorset Council, and then the children went off. 

They picked lots of seeds from wildflowers because we didn't want to buy them. We wanted to be working in a circular way, re-using. And the children sprinkled seeds on this bare bit of land, and we grew this beautiful meadow. 

But it didn't stop there. The children then wanted to raise money for a nature board to help educate the community. So we raised the money, the children did the artwork on the board, and then they became the experts. They became the guides. They guided people around for donations, to tell the community about what was living, what they could see within this meadow. 

It didn’t stop there either, because then they took their families out to wildlife trusts, gardens and meadows, which were all free. So they could add to their journals, add to their knowledge, tell their parents they're really proud that they can identify knapweek, for example. 

It got to a point towards the end of the summer term that they wanted to go out into nature, and connect with nature, more than wanting to get on the school tablets or the school computers.

Everybody, boys, girls, everyone. Can we just go outside? Can we go and see what else we can find? Can we use the app to discover what we can find, and improve our biodiversity within our school? That obviously connects really well with the National Nature Education Park, which the government is funding and running, which is a great resource.

So get your children out into nature using technology. Using the Seek app is really good on your phone or your tablet.

That was probably one of my best projects that made a huge impact. Not just within school, but families at home and the whole community.

What’s inspired you recently? 

I was on a podcast with a friend recently, the Muddy Puddle Teacher. She recently brought out a book, called The Muddy Puddle Key Stage One Teacher: A playful way to take the National Curriculum outdoors. It's a fantastic book with lovely pictures and creative, practical ideas that teachers can use within their curriculum to get their children and classroom outdoors and connecting with nature. So I really recommend people check out the book. 

For more reading recommendations, check out the Creating Value in Schools bookshop. 

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