Green school

Some time ago I promised myself to stop ranting about big companies and their complete lack of responsibility when it comes to our planet. It gets quite boring and doesn't spread good vibes. Yet after starting my post I realised this was exactly what I was doing again - somehow these companies keep winding me up. So in the spirit of not wanting to waste I have decided to publish this post anyway:

We had a letter from my daughter's school saying that they had joined 'Green Generation' a British Gas initiative, where the school can collect points (or leaves as they call them?!) and when the target number of points is reached the school will get equipment or something. Points can be collected by the pupils by doing different things, such as appointing tap monitors, setting up a school compost or making green pledges. Other people can also donate points to the school by for example doing a home energy saver check on the website.

I liked this idea, it sounded do-able to me. Normally in these schemes you have to spend money and collect vouchers,a very badly disguised way to encourage parents to buy more, but this you could do for free and even get personalised energy saving advice. Could it be that a big company was actually trying to help schools as well as encouraging energy saving with out any direct benefit to themselves???

Considering the progress we have made I didn't expect the report to be a big effort - and it wasn't.It was however a complete waste of time. Not only did the programme fail to nominate any points to the school for my efforts, but the whole thing was flawed.

The website didn't provide me with one single piece of information that I didn't know already. I guess that could be a good sign, as I have obviously learnt something over the last months, but still slightly disappointing.

However what really got to me (other than not being awarded any points) was the very generic approach disguised as a personalised report. It was obviously not designed for people who had heard of energy saving bulbs and insulation already, but for the people with no clue what so ever.

I had to fill in several details about our property, e.g. how big, how many windows, how many light fittings, how much insulation etc. I did it all, including ticking the boxes of yes, we have 300mm of loft insulation and yes, we have cavity wall insulation. Yet when my supposedly personal action plan came up it mentioned cavity wall insulation. Uhm, why - we have it already. OK fair enough under the carbon calculation section it did say that I would save 0 carbon by getting cavity wall insulation, so somewhere it did register that we have it already, but surely it shouldn't show up on my action plan then?

How come that a big resourceful company like British Gas can't advice properly on energy saving? I am not asking them for advice on raising kids or growing tomatoes, but energy saving should be their kind of thing, shouldn't it? Do they only have the knowledge to suggest the first basic steps of energy saving, such as insulate your home, switch your appliances off and use energy saving bulbs? Or were they in fact mainly interested in getting my details (I had to give full address and other stuff) in case I needed insulation and they could get a sales person round?
If they were serious about this they would have a programme that could deal with different categories of people, but I think they are more interested in looking good than actually achieving something real.

This is how far I got before realising I was on the rant again. Apologies to you all. So after re-reading it I started wondering what I should do instead. After all it had started with me wanting to be helpful to the school and getting the kids involved is definitely important, so there had to be something else that didn't involve British Gas or any other company for that matter. Amazingly a note came out from the school that they were looking for more parents for their eco committee. There we go! It was the obvious thing to do, but unfortunately it doesn't always take a big company to ruin your efforts - 2-year olds can be just as effective!

After speaking to the teacher we agreed that I would come along to the next meeting in the understanding they both my kids would be there as well and sit and draw or something (you have to be P3 to join the committee, so they are not quite big enough). I kept all my fingers and toes crossed that they would behave. We were off to a fine start, turned out that one of my daughter's classmates were there too, so they had company. All good and well and I got down to the business of helping some of the older kids inputting electricity readings to a spreadsheet. Then disaster! I won't give too many details, but lets just say, you should never bring a potty training kid to a meeting - especially not if they decide to show everybody what they have produced...

Needless to say the meeting was cut short for me and I now have to pluck up the courage to attend the next meeting without looking too embarrassed. Oh, what fun you can have trying being green....