A CELEBRATORY APPROACH TO EMBEDDING A CULTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY

The launch point for The Golden Egg Competition is Sustainability week in the first half of the Autumn term working through to the Golden Egg awards in the first half of the Summer term. The great thing about it being a competition is that everyone wants to know how they are doing, so Mr Clegg’s emails on water and energy consumption drop every two weeks on an alternating basis and he communicates on Sustainability Projects and Gardening as and when required. Whilst Mr Clegg provides the sustainability framework the initiatives are driven by his team of JCR Sustainability Prefects and their counterparts throughout the school. This year JCR representatives were Danny (D), Theo (G), Flora (J)and Emma (M);

‘This year the Sustainability Committee was the largest it has ever been with 55 members with representatives from every year group and every House as well as being open to anyone with an interest or passion for sustainability. This larger committee generated a wider range of ideas and opinions, leading to more effective initiatives or solutions to a problem and also reinforced that sustainability requires a collective collaborative effort rather than an individual initiative. This wider representation has been vital for the progression of sustainable practices and influencing the attitudes and habits of the wider pupil body’
Flora (J)

‘Creating a competitive dynamic between teenagers is the key to involvement. The Golden Egg Ceremony is upbeat and high energy and having this focus goes a long way to changing pupil attitudes towards wanting to be more sustainable’
Emma (M)

Having driven the sustainability initiatives throughout the year the Sustainability Prefects joined Deputy Heads of School, Jackson (A) and Anna (K) to coordinate the Golden Egg Awards Ceremony and host the evening;

‘Anna and I were keen to make the evening as engaging as possible as presenting spreadsheets of stats has the potential to be quite dry.  The Dance competition is popular so we knew that the performers would be happy to go on stage again and then Mr Clegg polled pupils on which songs they wished to perform as a House on the evening and House captains led their Houses on the Night. It was also great to have Faulkner’s integrated this year for the first time; it’s a great insight for them on the importance placed on sustainability in the Senior Houses. It’s a great House initiative, something that Houses are keen to win, and the effect ripples out across the school, so it’s very effective.’ Jackson (A)

In the first iteration of the Golden Egg Ceremony in 2023 Phil Clegg directed the entire event with contributions from pupils, the following year he introduced the event and handed over and this year the entire event was pupil run so pupils now have a template upon which they can build.

Hillside has an unbroken record in the Golden Egg competition, having been victorious three times in a row. As they have won over the last two years they feel the pressure to maintain their lead and as one of the oldest houses it is a real challenge. Sustainability Prefect is one of the major House Prefect roles because it’s a full, year-round responsibility and in Hillside you have to interview for the role.

‘One of the first things I did was to do an audit of the leaking showers in the House and put in a maintenance request as this tripped us up in the water consumption category before’ Sustainability Prefect, Tom (F)

‘We review the Golden Egg Stats in House meetings and look to see where we can make improvements in each area, so we take it very seriously. You do get the odd complaint about rooms being cold but you just put on a jumper don’t you?’
Head of House, Jack (F)

Whilst achieving sustainability benefits and cost saving for the College, the broader aim of the Golden Egg initiative is to educate Bradfieldians to be conscious of sustainability and to create a ‘sustainable mindset’ within the pupil body so that they are more aware and considerate of the issues. This mindset is firmly embedded in Hillside culture and if every House had those processes in place it would be ‘mission accomplished’.

We recognise that the behavioural changes we must make to be more sustainable are tough and through the medium of the Inter-House competition the pupils all now have experience of making the necessary choices and changes.

Armed with this knowledge and experience they can take it with them beyond Bradfield, propose and implement changes in their workplaces and make more sustainable lifestyle choices. Ultimately, the College hopes that they will be the leaders who help to drive sustainability in their lives and careers.

COLLEGE SUSTAINABILITY STATS

Since FY 2018/19 and the introduction of Sustainability initiatives, including the Golden Egg competition in 2022 we have…

• reduced our Annual Energy use by 1.7m kWh or 16%
• reduced our Carbon emissions by over 500 tonnes or 21%

The substantial energy price increase has wiped out initial cost reduction based on reduced usage,  but without this decreased usage our energy bills would be £150k higher.