Year 10 Liam Russell has been in the Eco Club at Dorothy Stringer since he first joined the school in 2007. At Eco Club, Liam is involved with coppicing maple trees and woodland working days. He says: “it’s all in the school grounds so we deal with the management of the forest. We recently did the butterfly haven, planting all the wild flowers for it.”

He started attending Eco Club because a friend did and says: “I didn’t really think much of eco stuff before I went but then I thought it was quite fun. There’s lots of digging and outdoor work, I like that. So I got into it a bit more and started going every week and now here I am.”

Liam’s affection for gardening and manual work has lead to a wider interest in sustainability. He is taking an environmental science GCSE and considering carrying it on to A Levels. Through the Eco Club he has attended parents evenings selling recycled paper notepads, raising £80 for the Brian Foster Centre of Environmental Education. He also runs two recycling-based games at the summer fair to help teach others about reusing and separating waste before chucking it in the bin. Liam is a member of the eco-committee, a student council working to improve the ecology around and sustainability of the school, and is the eco representative on the school council.

Environmental education co-ordinator Rob Sandercock says: “The eco club seems to have clicked for Liam as he has attended most weeks for the last four years. He has a dry and quirky sense of humour that has lifted my spirits on many a miserable day. He took on the recycled pad project as his own and spent a number of evenings selling them to parents at parents’ evening. He has also come to all the Woodland working days we have throughout the year and where he has actively helped manage the woodland.”