What is Green Schools?

Green-Schools is an International environmental education programme, designed to promote and acknowledge whole school action for the environment.

Green-Schools offers a well-defined, controllable way to take environmental issues from the curriculum and apply them to the day to day running of a school. This process helps students to recognise the importance of environmental issues and take them more seriously in their personal and home lives.

Benefits to your school
The Green-Schools programme can help schools to:

• Improve the School environment
• Reduce litter and waste
• Reduce fuel bills
• Increase environmental awareness
• Involve the local community
• Gain local publicity
• Create links with other schools in Ireland and abroad

Green-Schools is run by An Taisce in co-operation with Local Authorities throughout Ireland and is sponsored by Coca-Cola Bottlers Ireland Ltd. Green-Schools is an initiative of FEE - Foundation for Environmental Education and is referred to internationally as Eco-Schools. At present there are 25 countries operating the programme in Europe and beyond.

In Ireland there are currently over 1370 Primary and Secondary schools participating in the programme, that's over a third of all schools in the country! 269 schools have implemented the programme successfully and have been awarded the Green Flag.

Green-Schools is both a programme and an award scheme. The award is given to schools that successfully complete the Seven Steps of the programme