Where to begin with a Climate Action Plan

Where to begin with a Climate Action Plan: track sheet, daily actions and partnerships

Cheryl Hadland, founder of Top Days Nurseries, delivered a practical seminar on how Managers can enrich sustainability at the heart of nursery management. Cheryl, who’s leadership is underpinned by a manager’s doctorate in sustainability, stressed the importance of timely decision making and shared framework that values diversity and a willingness to enterprise through changes along this journey.

Often proactively adopting greener alternatives comes with slight reluctance as actions appear detached, uncertain and overwhelming when considering the complexity of running a nursery. DfE’s current early years climate action plan contains four overarching pillars. These include decarbonisation, adaption and resilience, biodiversity, climate education and green carers[1].What is adopted under these titles is based on your impactful decision making and clear planning. To streamline this process, we have created a track sheet that can be adapted to your setting as part of your sustainability audit to help managers and staff meet deadlines.

Download our track sheet

For full functionality, we recommend downloading the track sheet to your desktop.

Budget certainly strains many nurseries leaders. However, this doesn’t need to be the case; looking into each sustainability pillar, there are examples of starting small and achieving major milestones. The underlying basis of a successful plan must be to combine the operational element with social and community driven goals. For example, walk to school days and advising parents to provide lunch in washable tubs, both aimed to reduce carbon emissions and promote healthy lifestyle. Using water bottles and teaching children how to refill and turn off taps and conserving rainwater for water play can target EYFS and meet the adaptation and resilience pillar. Promoting biodiversity by feeding local birds and creating bird feeders and using summer holidays as flowering challenges in recycled take home plant pots[2]. Monthly nature activity events aimed at learning can maintain a culture of eco-socialisation and promoting learning to wider community.

When considering what services and programmes to include in your climate action plan, there are few initiatives that are listed on government website. One example is National Education Nature Park programme, a free initiative that supports children with wildlife discovery and learning via visiting parks and partaking activities. They provide curriculum, resources and practical activities based on nursery requirements helping meet many of the pillars in one structured programme. Let’s Go Zero looks at energy, waste, curriculum, transport, food and more, providing help to 3K nurseries nationwide with local volunteer ambassadors to help delivery of impact climate action plans[3]. This is especially helpful for environments that are fast paced, low staffed and have competing responsibilities.

Once leadership team is confident and an adequate eco-culture is established, becoming an eco- nursery member can also enhance loyalty to sustainability culture. Eco Nursery membership includes framework with over 100 sustainable actions curated for nurseries, best marketing practices for newsletters, social media and parent apps, aimed at long term perceptual change of nurseries from within to beyond setting[4]. Looking specifically into supporting staff, Green Flag accreditation offers staff training and certificates, website and programmes for a small fee, creating all the essential tools to becoming eco- nursery leaders[5].

Whether it’s the regular eco-friendly nursery actions, national park visits with directed learning or long-term partnership with partners, Morton Michel hopes you gain a greater clarity in planting the first seed. Let’s have leaders confidently create spaces that build a positive future for people and our planet.