This year the Alliance's National Week of Play takes as its focus eco-sustainability in early years and explores how we can support children’s understanding and involvement with protecting our beautiful and fragile planet Earth for future generations.
Play is a key part of our children’s lives and not only helps their overall learning and development, but also promotes their understanding of nature and the importance of taking care of the world around them.
Through their play children make discoveries and learn that we are all interconnected and interdependent on each other – from the biggest of sea creatures to the smallest of mini beasts.
Throughout this week we will be posting daily blogs on a play and eco sustainability theme. And to start us off we're going to talk about pledges!
Taking the sustainability pledge
We too here at the Alliance are starting our eco-sustainability journey and like many of you learning as we go.
To underpin our approach, both in our provision and on a national basis, we have developed a sustainability pledge to help us take those first steps – big or small – as we reflect on the part that we can play in not only developing our own practice, but also supporting our youngest citizens to understand how they can be involved and develop their sense of responsibility too.
Throughout this Week of Play as we focus on eco-sustainability, we would like to share the sustainability pledge we have developed with you and invite you to use it as your own guide and commitment to working together to protect our planet.
This pledge can then be shared with staff, children, families and communities raising their awareness and supporting them to take part along with you.
The pledge has five key simple overarching commitments that you can use either as your starting point or as recognition of the steps you have already taken so far.
1. Reduce the use of plastics, in particular single use plastics (SUPs) in our everyday lives
2. Cut down on waste by reducing, reusing and recycling (3R’s)
3. Minimise food waste
4. Caring for the world we live in
5. Change perspectives and develop understanding in ourselves, our families and our children
Each of these commitments is then broken down into small steps and suggestions that you can chose from that reflect your own unique eco-sustainability journey and the needs of your team, children, families and communities.
Perhaps you might decide to look at cut down on waste by reducing, reusing and recycling by reducing the amount of printing you do and finding somewhere that will recycle the printer cartridges. Maybe you could focus on Reduce the use of plastics, in particular single use plastics in our everyday lives and source bio-degradable alternatives to the baby wipes that contain micro-plastics?
The pledge is designed to be flexible and adaptable – you might have your own ideas of the steps you would like to take that reflect your provision and the interests of your children and families. It’s important to ensure that everyone is included and feels that the steps you choose are relevant to them if we want to succeed in making a real difference.
A real strength of early years is our understanding that even the smallest of steps or commitments can make a big difference and the sustainability pledge recognises this and provides inspiration for what your first steps might be.
How can I get a copy of the sustainability pledge?
The sustainability pledge is included in our National Week of Play resource pack which is free to all!
To get the resource pack please send us your details and we'll send you the link to the resource pack which includes the pledge which you can find in the Publicity Support Materials folder.