We all need to care about the planet, but how can we train staff and help them to create an eco-friendly nursery? Cheryl Hadland from Tops Day Nurseries investigates…
Becoming a more sustainable nursery is a journey, not a one-off event. It’s a change of culture, and I’m sure you will know that real cultural change is a challenge for any group. It takes strong, committed leadership with a clear vision.
Start by reflecting on why you want your nursery to be more sustainable. Maybe even write it down. There could be a variety of reasons, from compliance with Ofsted for a climate action plan to a personal desire to protect the children in your care from the impact of climate change.
Perhaps you’re located in a flood plain or your water was rationed last summer. Like many of us, you may find that your energy bills increased by up to 300%, affecting your financial sustainability or at least limiting your purchasing power. Maybe you have a passion for animal rights and want to see a decrease in species extinction or intensive farming?
As well as your own belief system, it’s also important to reflect on what views your colleagues hold on sustainability. Rationally, you could expect the bursars and accounts teams to be concerned with financial sustainability, returns on investment and budgets.
You could also anticipate that educators and teachers will be concerned with pedagogy and resources for their classrooms and outside areas. The estates team will be interested in insulation, heating systems, repairs and replacement of white goods.
If you want your team on board, you need to sell your vision, drawing on what they know already, and what they want for the future. Do they have children or grandchildren of their own? A personal interest is as important here as behaviour at work.
And how about you? Are you walking the walk as well as talking the talk? You can’t be a role model for sustainability without behaving sustainably in some ways. Do you commute sustainably? Do you eat and dress sustainably? Do you go on holiday sustainably?
Admittedly, most people would be hard-pressed to live their entire lives in a way that doesn’t impact the planet, and it’s OK if we don’t do absolutely everything sustainably as long as we make some efforts.
Reflect carefully on your behaviour. Think of what changes you have made, or are prepared to make, in your own life before launching sustainability on everyone else. Acknowledge to yourself and others what your imperfections are, while sharing plans to improve your personal sustainability record.
Remember, it’s not for us to lecture others about how they lead their personal lives; we cannot control that. We can only make decisions appropriate to our own circumstances and beliefs, in the knowledge we can contribute positively to our community, and the planet.
However, in the workplace, we should all be adhering to a single strategy and code of practice which outlines and strengthens our environmental aims.
Humans like to have some control of their behaviour, not just at home but at work as well. Offer your vision to your colleagues. You may be surprised how supportive they are on sustainability, and may already have embarked on their own sustainability journey.
It’s very likely that some may grow fruit or vegetables, many will be recycling, some will be vegetarian or vegan. Celebrate these and hear colleagues’ stories about how they came to be practising sustainability.
Ask your accounts people what the biggest workplace bills are (excluding staffing). You’ll often find that the most effective way to increase pay or resourcing will be by reducing bills such as electricity, gas or waste.
Accountants will be more than happy to help with recording this data and reporting changes back to those in operations and facilities, who can then modify their behaviour, lead change and make an impact.
Success is very encouraging and should be celebrated, in a way that is appropriate for your team. You shouldn’t have to give orders to improve sustainability, merely offer opportunities and choices and encourage them to commit and make an impact. Set them up to succeed, celebrate and repeat.
It’s likely that we all have some gaps in our knowledge when it comes to sustainability. This is partly because it’s unlikely to have been covered in basic training or CPD. Also, the subject is vast. It covers energy use, bio-diversity, diet, shopping habits and household waste amongst other things. Research around the subject is ever-evolving, meaning best practices could change from week to week.
This is to be expected, but it means you need to revisit decisions regularly and make changes as and when required. Curiosity, flexibility and resilience are required for success. However, there will inevitably be mistakes or errors in judgement.
As we so often tell our young charges, in these cases we learn from the experience and go on to do better next time. This collaborative, supportive style of leadership leads to a cooperative, honest and positive working environment, which is great for staff retention.
You’ll probably decide to develop new policies and practices around what you learn on your sustainability journey. Perhaps you’ll change your purchasing system or include sustainable citizenship in your pedagogy.
But remember that delivering the theory or giving formal presentations is only 10% of the teaching and learning needed to effect change. You then need to provide coaching and mentoring to support the change, during which your good role modelling will be very useful.
A whopping 70% of the change in your workplace will come from practice. For colleagues to put new practices in place, they will need to understand the theories, create new policies around these, have the tools to make the changes and then be given agency to practice.
To give some context to my advice, I’ll share with you a mistake we made (and learnt from). We wanted to reduce waste and improve the soil for growing, and we wanted to stop buying compost in plastic bags. However, on buying composters for each nursery, we soon discovered that several of the composters just sat in their packaging for weeks after delivery.
What we should have done was to discuss the “why?” with managers, and offered those who wanted to give composting a try a choice of composter and where to locate it. We should have provided instructions and composter powder, and sent the gardener to demonstrate use and to support the first attempts at practice.
We should have discussed with educators how best to include children in their use, so that their learning is supported, and then helped them include composting use as daily practice with the children, knowing what the learning outcomes might be for children at their different stages of development.
However, rather than dwell on the mistake, we learnt from it and tried again. Once we’d rectified those initial errors, we went a step further and produced an instruction video for those who missed the training. We supported room leaders and teachers in training new staff, and encouraged ongoing communication between educators and gardeners to help address any problems.
This is so much more complex than buying a couple of puzzles! In fact, introducing composters and similar items such as mud kitchens, wormeries and vegetable planting are all projects, not one-off purchases. And it is a series of these types of projects that will entrench sustainability in your setting, so be realistic, and pace yourselves.
Sustainability needs to be embedded in every decision and every job description, to ensure your setting is on the sustainable journey.
Some nurseries are achieving carbon neutral right now. This is achievable by all, so don’t delay in doing something, however small! Share your success stories so we can all learn from each other, and help protect our children’s future.
Cheryl Hadland is founder and MD of Tops Day Nurseries. She is chair of GECCO, a registered charity, established to promote sustainability in Early Years childcare and education.
