SECONDARY NEWS Siemens welcomes back Greater Manchester schools for COP29
Technology company Siemens recently hosted secondary school students from across Greater Manchester for a day of learning about sustainable futures, as world leaders gathered in Baku, Azerbeijan, for COP29.
In partnership with Siemens, leading businesses from across the North West, including Wesleyan, Adecco and Nestlé, delivered workshops to encourage pupils to consider the careers that will be key in tackling the growing shortage of sustainability skills. The 50 student attendees also got the opportunity to meet a range of Siemens employees – including Director of Sustainability Louise Harry – to discuss the vast number of sustainability careers available and the technology being used to drive sustainability in industry across the UK.
The event at Siemens’ Manchester HQ forms part of the WildHearts Global Youth Summit – the world’s largest youth-led sustainability event.
Organised to coincide with the United Nations’ annual Climate Change conference, COP, the Global Youth Summit connects over 35,000 young people across five continents every year to encourage learning, collaboration and innovation for a more sustainable future.
Louise Harry, Director of Sustainability and EHS at Siemens UK, said: “As we transition towards a more sustainable future, it’s vital that we foster and maintain a talent pipeline that ensures we can meet the growing need for sustainable skills in the years to come. Initiatives such as this have a key role to play in providing students with the tools they need to develop into our next generation of sustainability leaders and decision makers.”
Low carbon funding helps Ruthin school decarbonise
Funding from the Welsh Government has helped a Ruthin secondary school decarbonise its heating by replacing gas boilers with renewable air source heat pumps.
Ysgol Brynhyfryd is a bilingual co-educational comprehensive school for over 1,000 pupils aged between 11 and 18 years of age in the valley of Clywd, in North Wales.
The school is maintained by the Denbighshire Education Authority and the renewable solution was the installation of solar photovoltaic panels on the school roof, along with replacing three gas boilers with two commercial air source heat pumps.
“Between the heat pumps and the solar panels, the school is estimated to save an average of £17 to £19 thousand per year, along with 28 tonnes of carbon,” commented Ben Musgrave, Director of JM Renewable Solutions, who installed the systems. The existing gas boilers were replaced with two 40kw CAHV air source heat pumps from Mitsubishi Electric. The school has underfloor floor heating throughout. JM Renewables also installed a further 75kW of solar panels on the building’s roof, to help with the running costs. The CAHV heat pumps achieve 70°C water temperatures down to -20°C ambient temperature to deliver continuous heating. Multiple unit cascade control offers capacity from 7.8kW to 640kW to make the system suitable for a wide range of applications.
14
www.education-today.co.uk
Wrexham school pupils win tour of AO recycling plant
A secondary school in North Wales won a trip to one of the biggest fridge recycling plants in Europe, hosted by a children’s TV presenter. Electrical retailer AO ran a competition to give one class the chance to go on a tour of the state-of-the-art facility in Telford, led by CBBC host and sustainability influencer James Stewart.
Ysgol Bryn Alyn, in Wrexham, won the prize and took a group of 15 pupils, aged between 11 and 13.
As well as meeting AO’s huge fridge crushing machine Bertha, which weighs 80 tonnes and can ‘eat’ up to 100 fridges per hour, the class were also shown science experiments with Lego and learned about how AO processes around 200 tonnes of fridge plastic each week, which goes on to make new products such as bathroom and kitchen fans. During the trip, James Stewart challenged the children to ‘be a TV presenter for the day’ by filming their visit, on smart phones provided by AO, and editing the footage into short videos, which have since been shared on AO’s social media channels.
Richard Holden, science teacher at Ysgol Bryn Alyn, said: “It was a really insightful day and James Stewart was great with the kids, giving them the confidence to be mini TV presenters and letting them shine.” Rob Sant, AO’s group recycling director, came up with the idea for the competition after learning that more than a third of Brits rely on their kids to remind them to recycle. A survey of more than 2,000 British adults, commissioned by AO, found that around 39% of British adults need some help from their children when it comes to recycling.
December 2024
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
