Our Sustainability Journey

Our Sustainability Leads are Ms Jaffey and Ms Steptoe.

Here at The Wells Free School we take our responsibility to our sustainability goals very seriously. By making sustainability part of everyday school life, we’re helping children develop a deep sense of responsibility, hope, and action. We want our pupils to believe they can make a difference – and to feel proud of doing so.

While we have always recycled paper and plastic, since the beginning of 2025 we have made further efforts to ensure we have actions for each key sustainability category: decarbonisation, adaptation and resilience, biodiversity and climate education and green skills.

In June 2025, we had an audit from a representative from Let's Go Zero 2030 and our report can be viewed here. We have used this report to create our Climate Action Plan.

What have we done so far ...

We have established a Sustainability Working Party that comprises staff, governors and parents.
We have an Eco Council with representatives from classes 1-6.
We had initial meetings with the Tunbridge Wells Rangers.
We have ensured that environmental awareness is a core feature of our broad and balanced curriculum.
In the kitchen, we have moved to bio-degradable pudding pots that can be recycled with our food waste and we have meat-free Mondays.
We have started additional recycling of soft plastics.
All new batteries are rechargable and we have reduced the packaging for our free school milk.
Where possible we repurpose items and if they are broken, the children apply their DT learning to fix them.
We ensure all food waste is put in the food waste bin.
We promote biodiversity throughout the school grounds and have a dedicated Forest School area and teacher. Recently we have introduced a pond into the Forest School area and have noticed the arrival of new species.

Our next steps ...

Ensure that we consider sustainability when we introduce new strategies and initiatives.
Continuing our conservation work on Tunbridge Wells Common in conjunction with the Tunbridge Wells Rangers.
And much, much more!

Eco Council

The Eco Council comprises of two representatives from each year group (Year 1 to Year 6). During meetings, they identify environmental issues and opportunities and talk through the practicalities of implementing different projects. They then feed back to their classes to keep the whole school involved. Since the formation of the group back in the spring, the children have conducted an environmental audit, met with our Climate Action Advisor, held discussions round our whole school priorities and visited the Common to assess potential environmental projects.

Meeting our Climate Action Advisor:

The Eco Council on our visit to Tunbridge Wells Common:

"We save the world" - Year 1 Eco Council member

"We help the environment and clean up stuff. We make sure people don't litter" - Year 2 Eco Council member

Eco Refill Shop

The Wells Waste Warriors are holding their Eco Refill shops on the 1st Friday of each month. These shops help us reduce our plastic waste. Our next stall will be on 6th February but we will also be visiting Cripps and selling our products there.

WOW Challenge

Many children received their December WOW badges for successfully taking part in our walk to school challenge. To get a badge, children must make at least one active journey to school each week, and so children have been walking, scooter-ing and biking to school. Many children who live further away have also been taking part through park and stride - parking a little bit away from school and walking the final 10 minutes of the journey. In fact, the children have done such a fantastic job at earning their badges that we had to make a special request for more WOW badges! Children have continued to log their journeys this term and we are looking forward to awarding many more badges for January journeys.

Early Years Outdoor Classroom Tree Project

We have recently been awarded a grant from Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, to replace the crab apple trees in the Early Years Outdoor Classroom with fruit trees. The trees have now been planted and we are looking forward to seeing them flourish in the spring!

Our Carbon Footprint

Cut Your Carbon Month (November 2025)

We took part in Cut Your Carbon month and managed to save this much carbon! For further details on how we achieved this, you can review our report here.