Friday June 13th 2025
St Andrews Primary School, Gorebridge
Written by Midlothian View Reporter, Luke Jackson
A Midlothian school has been highly commended for its design submission to celebrate 30 years of Eco-Schools in Scotland.
Environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful is celebrating the incredible impact of Eco-Schools over the past three decades with a series of challenges throughout the school year.
There were three challenges for schools to take part in: a collage challenge, a bingo challenge and a tartan challenge. Each challenge had prizes for the winners, ranging from gift cards to litter picking equipment. The winners were announced online during the Eco-Schools celebration week (9-13 June).
St Andrews Primary School in Gorebridge was highly commended for their design. They decided to repurpose crisp packets to create their tartans as they have been doing a lot of work recently to recycle soft plastics in their school. They chose red to represent their school colours, green for their Eco-Schools Green Flag and silver for their UNCRC Silver Award. Some children chose to include blue to represent the oceans that they are protecting by recycling their soft plastics.
Schools and nurseries were challenged to create their own tartan inspired by the story behind the recently unveiled Scottish International Eco-Schools Planet Earth Tartan, using their local heritage to help create their tartan design. We had one winner in the nursery category, one winner in the primary category and two highly commended entries in the primary category. The winners receive £200 and the highly commended entries receive £100, sponsored by HP, to help their school with its Eco-Schools activities.
Andrea Gabriel, Education and Learning Manager at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: “Throughout the last few months we’ve had so much fun celebrating 30 years of Eco-Schools, with visits to some of our amazing schools and now this set of challenges.
“It’s been so inspiring to see their creativity and love for Eco-Schools and it wasn’t easy to select a winner.
“I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part and congratulations to our winners. We’re so passionate about environmental education and it is so inspiring to see that passion is shared by young people and educators across Scotland.”
This year Keep Scotland Beautiful is celebrating 30 years of Eco-school and Young Reporters for the Environment with visits to school across the country.
The Climate Action Schools programme, funded by the Scottish Government, provides a positive driver and demonstrator for schools towards achieving Target 2030.
Learn more about Climate Action Schools here.
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