YOLANDE DU PREEZ
The Kronendal Primary School assembly hall erupted with applause and cheer on Friday September 9 as Hout Bay High School was named the overall winners of the Thrive Enviro Audit 2016.
This is the third consecutive year that Hout Bay High School has made other participating schools green with envy, proving they are once again the most environmentally friendly school in Hout Bay.
Hot on their heels in second place was Kronendal Primary School with Llandudno Primary School in third place.
Each school won an educational weekend camp in the Cedarberg for five pupils and a teacher, sponsored by the Cape Leopard Trust.
The event, organised by Thrive founder Bronwen Lankers-Byrne, aims to assist schools in their journey to greener functioning and adoption of more sustainable practices at their schools.
This was the 7th annual EnviroQuiz/Art competition and every year, Thrive conducts an annual Enviro Audit to enable the schools to establish how they fare in comparison to other schools, where they have space for improvement and how improvements can be made to ultimately ensure that they become the greenest school.
For the Enviro Audit, each school is judged based on how many points out of 100 they earned.
The EnviroArt contributes five points and the EnviroQuiz, 10 points.
Participating schools had to prepare presentations about their schools showing how environmentally friendly they are.
In the judging, auditors look at how well waste, water and energy is managed on a day-to-day basis and assess the school gardens to see if they are water wise and include biodiversity.
They assess the quality of the school compost heaps and worm farms and measure both the quality and quantity of food grown in the veggie garden and fruit and nut orchards.
The EnviroQuiz and EnvirArt had two categories, junior and senior, each with vouchers to purchase plants up to R1 500 for the winners from Valley Nursery.
In the junior EnviroQuiz category, the German School took first prize, walking off with the Sentinel floating trophy sponsored by Sentinel News. Rondebosch Boys Preparatory School came in second while there was a tie between Kommetjie and Koeberg primary schools in third place.
In the senior category, San Souci Girls’ High School won the first prize while Summit House took the second prize and the International School of Hout Bay (ISHB) and Wynberg Girls’ High battled it out in a sudden death resulting in a third place for ISHB and a fourth place for Wynberg Girls’ High.
Silikamva High School walked off with first prize in the senior EnviroArt category while Disa Primary were the winners for the junior category. Ms Lankers-Byrne said it was a difficult process trying to decide which art pieces should receive the prizes as all the schools made a great effort to come up with art that was punchy and explanatory.
“After great deliberation we decided that Silikamva High School should take the first prize for their ‘No Water No Life’ mural.
“We found it had a very clear message, strong graphic design, and was carefully planned.
“We loved the central line dividing the positives and negatives,” she said.
She said the piece ‘Water is the Pulse of Life’ by Disa Primary was a bold image with a watery heart in its centre.
“We felt it covered all the issues while also using recycled materials very well,” she said.
Hout Bay High School pupil, Clarence Daniels, who is actively involved in the school’s garden project, said he was delighted and the garden at their school is proof that hard work pays off.
