The Primary Schools’ Earth Summit is an award winning, annual event held in Surrey Council Chambers. Schools across Surrey are invited to participate and children invited to air their views on Climate Change and action that children want to see happening in their local area.

The Primary Earth Summit Presentations will be available to view here from December 2008.

This exciting event is now available to be run in all UK local authorities, in partnership with Wastebuster. Please contact the Wastebuster development team on + (44) 1483 893 550 or email info@wastebuster.co.uk for further details.

Surrey Primary School Earth Summit 2008

The 2008 Primary School Earth Summit this year retains its traditional format, being held in the Council Chamber at County Hall before a panel of influential people briefed to listen carefully, and respond, to each school’s input.

Each participating school will be represented by up to 3 children presenting their school’s entry. As usual, the children will have 3 minutes to make their presentation. A simple healthy lunch will be provided for children and adults taking part and there will be an exhibition area encouraging sustainability action in school and at home. The Summit itself retains its non-competitive nature, but there will be several competitions and take away resources on offer in the exhibition area as normal.

This year the Earth Summit is being run in association with Wastebuster. The Wastebuster programme has been developed in partnership with Surrey County Council and many other national partners, to generally encourage waste minimisation action. Wastebuster has been validated by Eco-Schools as a valuable support programme for schools working towards Eco-School accreditation.

This year for the Earth Summit, schools are asked to investigate domestic food waste with a view to changing householders’ habits. Children may choose to focus on either challenges, or, life cycle, or, cause and effect as a theme, or, may select their own theme related to domestic food waste.

• Challenges means focusing on issues that need to be resolved if food waste is to be reduced, such as lack of space for composting, minimising the potential for food waste, family apathy, ready meals, packaging.
• Life cycle could involve investigating ideas related to the succession of seed to crops to plate to soil, for example, growing your own, using your own compost, landfill versus composting, methods of biodegrading, what happens to food waste elsewhere in this country and abroad.
• Cause and effect is about the impact of dealing with food waste including environmental costs to society and economic costs to the family, for instance, food life spans, attitudes and behaviour towards food and global food shortages, ethical purchasing, environmental effects, impact of different diets, planning food purchases.

Schools are asked to present their ideas either as a stop/frame animation, or, a debate. The activity guidelines can be found on the Wastebuster website (www.wastebuster.co.uk - simply email info@wastebuster.co.uk to receive your Surrey school pass code) and in your Wastebuster pack, which will be sent to you when you register your interest in taking part in the Earth Summit. It is intended that the presentations, animations and photographs of the event will be filmed and will be available to view and download on the Wastebuster website after the event.

Please register your intention to participate by completing the form attached to the Surrey Primary Earth Summit School Bulletin. The deadline for registration is the 30th September 2008.