SELF-SUSTAINABLE: Kacper Bogalecki with Gearoid McGorrin, Rian Gill, Ethan Slattery, James Smith, Navansh Johnson, Fionn McCloskey and Paul Foran implementing a more self-sustainable and climate friendly project in the Sem. Photo: Grigoriy Geniyevskiy

By Colm Looney

Innovative students have decided to up their game when it comes to self-sustainability in their secondary school to try to win a grant for solar panels to cut heating costs.

Students at St Brendan’s College have formed the ‘Self-Sustainable Sem’ committee and have entered into the national ‘Friends of the Earth Solar Schools’ competition which would allow them to access a grant that would cover 90 percent of the costs for solar panels for their school.

This journey began last year with the beginning of the ‘Fridays for Future’ strikes all across the country, when a select group of students decided something should be done on the school’s behalf.

“A group of students, myself included, got together with the supervision of Ms Sheehy and Ms Quirke for our first meeting,” Director of the Self-Sustainable Sem, Kacper Bogalecki, told the Killarney Advertiser. “We discussed what kind of action our school could get involved in. We started off with the ºC+ that we made out on the basketball court and worked our way along from there.”

They got involved with the RTE Youth Assembly on Climate Action and some of the students attended the event.

“Following this it was suggested to us that we attempt something for the ECO-UNESCO Young Environmentalist Award which occurred around November. We came together to seek out ways in which the school could become more self-sustainable.”

So far this year the school has implemented an outright ban on plastic bottles and has replaced all plastic consumables in the canteen with more renewable or recyclable options. After a meeting with Green Party member Dr Anne-Marie Fuller, the group learned of different ways to make the school more eco-friendly such as implementing a uniform renewal system and a TerraCycle scheme.

The lads recently posted a video on FOEIreland YouTube and members of the committee asked the people of Killarney for their assistance, to like their post and share it with each other and received an amazing response back.

“Our main goal is to reduce our carbon footprint and to hopefully assist our local community at the same time,” Kacper said. “We also aim to make the school more self-sustainable and climate friendly.”