Sustainability

Our Environmental Impact

The School has been working in a number of areas to make its estate more energy efficient. In 2019 we set out on this journey by gathering historic energy consumption data back to 2016 from our metered supplies. At this point (a time with a comparable school roll) the estate consumed 4,940,000kwh of gas, 1,460,000kwh of electricity and 23,000,000 litres of water.

Our consumption from the same metered supplies in 2022 had reduced to 3,947,000kwh (20% reduction) for gas, 1,130,000kwh (22% reduction) electricity and 19,800,000 litres of water (14% reduction).

This reduction has been achieved by commitment to a number of initiatives to improve the efficiency of our buildings such as insulation (both loft and cavity wall), window replacement with double and triple glazed units, replacing fluorescent with LED lighting, replacing inefficient boilers, heating controls, replacing infrastructure and leak detection.

On a day-to-day basis we have implemented out of hours shut down programmes to reduce energy waste and we have installed 22 sub meters across the site to enable us to analyse and compare electricity data every half hour in areas of high usage such as kitchens, boarding houses and the Prep School. We already have adequate gas metering across the site and are working with the suppliers to feed their half hourly data into our platform. This is a crucial next step towards engaging with the pupils and staff with real, live information.

As a large energy user Blundell’s has participated in the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) in 2015, 2019 and will again participate in 2025.

If the above items are the low hanging fruit, the more exciting and exotic projects have been our roof mounted solar arrays.

We installed a 50kW array on the new Design and Technology roof in 2019 and a further 47kW array on the new School House roof in 2023. A further 160kW installation is planned for Mayfield and the Sports Hall in spring 2024. These arrays have the potential to produce 23% of the School’s electricity and, in the case of the Prep School, 59%. During the summer months we are projecting that the Prep School will be largely off grid in future.

We are continually reviewing options for on-site energy generation, battery storage, new heating technologies, electric vehicles and supplying our water from a bore hole. These projects will only be pursued if they are viable and sustainable.

As previously mentioned, the next crucial step is engaging with staff and pupils via the new committee structures that were started in September 2023.

No sustainability report would be complete without a section on waste. Since 2018 we have reduced the amount of waste produced on site from 250 tonnes to 190 tonnes. At the same time we have reduced our landfill waste from 48% to 6% (mostly building waste).

Of our current waste 110 tonnes go to a waste incineration site (producing 9,000kW of electricity), 33 tonnes of wood waste goes to a local biodigester, 37 tonnes are recycled.

Our current initiatives are centred around reducing food waste and reducing food packaging waste through our supply chain (35% of our site waste coming from the kitchens). We are also buying our cleaning chemicals as a concentrate and diluting them on site in reusable bottles to reduce plastic waste via this route.

Ian Barnes
Chief Operating Officer