ISLE OF LEWIS SCHOOL TOPS LEAGUE TABLE IN NATIONAL RECYCLING COMPETITION

Eco-minded pupils at Balallan School have scooped £1,000 for their environmental achievements in a national recycling competition.

Kirk and Sharon present award to pupils in Balallan School

The school has won the ‘Most Improved School’ award in the UK finals of the Yellow Woods Challenge 2007 – an environmental campaign for schools run by Yellow Pages working in partnership with the Woodland Trust and local authorities across the UK.

The Challenge rewards schools for recycling old Yellow Pages directories.  This year, the 32 Balallan pupils clinched the title for the impressive increase in the average number of directories collected per pupil, from 5 directories in 2006 to 18 directories in 2007

Susannah Finn, chair of the judges at Yell, the publisher of Yellow Pages directories said: “We were really impressed by Balallan School’s enthusiasm for the Challenge and their excellent recycling efforts this year.  The school is a worthy winner of this title and a real ambassador for the Challenge.”
 
Mrs Anne MacLeod, headteacher at Balallan School, said: “The children were thrilled when they learnt we had won the national award.  We plan to use the prize money to develop outdoor classroom areas within our school grounds which will allow our pupils to study the diversity of plants and living creatures in school and begin to foster a caring appreciation of the environment.”

For every pound Yellow Pages awards to schools, it gives a matching pound to the Woodland Trust’s ‘Tree For All’ campaign – the most ambitious children’s tree-planting project ever launched in the UK.

Jacqui Morris, communications officer for the Woodland Trust in Scotland, said: “The match funding from this award will help us plant and care for a hundred trees in Scotland, so thank you to everyone at the school and on the Isle of Lewis who took part.”

The 2008 Yellow Woods Challenge will take place in the Western Isles in June.  To find out more information about the local Yellow Woods Challenge, call Sharon MacKinnon, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, on 01851 708613 or visit www.yellow-woods.co.uk