Turning sustainability ideas into things a school actually does.

Sustainability at Wellington runs through a few different groups, and I’m part of several of them. With my partner, I’m one of the College’s Student Sustainability Leads. I co-founded the Sustainability House Representatives, and separately co-founded and chair the Student Sustainability Council; some students sit on both, but they do different jobs. I’m also Head of the Global Citizenship and Sustainability Group.

As Student Sustainability Leads, my partner and I put proposals to the College and built things ourselves. We wrote a half-year sustainability course that all 250 Third Formers now take, and ran eco tournaments across seven schools, involving around 1,500 pupils. With the Global Citizenship and Sustainability Group, I taught sustainability sessions at local prep schools in 2025–26.

I also designed an inter-house Sustainability Cup for the College, which launches in January 2027.

These are the initiatives started and run by pupils, including the ones I lead or helped build.

• Student Sustainability Council. I co-founded it and chair it. It’s now a permanent body, and it has presented to the whole school in assembly, to around 2,000 people.
• Sustainability House Representatives. I co-founded them: two representatives in each house, separate from the Council.
• Student Sustainability Leads. My partner and I put proposals to the College; following them, the College committed over £500,000.
• Reusable containers. My partner and I won £60,000 of College investment to replace single-use packaging in the main dining areas. Damaged containers go back to the manufacturer to be remade.
• Third Form sustainability course. My partner and I built a half-year course that all 250 Third Formers take, each running a project tied to one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Sustainability Cup. I designed a year-long inter-house competition: five term-long challenges, four sprints, and fortnightly training for house reps, mapped to the Sustainable Development Goals. It launches in January 2027.
• Eco tournaments. Across seven schools, involving around 1,500 pupils.
• Mock COP. A pupil-run negotiation hosted at Wellington. Its resolution goes to COP31 this November.
• Prep-school outreach. Sustainability and climate sessions at local prep schools, which I taught with the Global Citizenship and Sustainability Group in 2025–26.
• A public green space. Pupils restored a public plot of about 90 m² with native perennials, a sensory herb corner, rainwater harvesting and new plaques.
• Conservation work. Pupils put in around 250 hours a year of habitat management on the estate.

Most of the College’s biggest changes are run by its estates, catering and grounds teams, not by pupils. They’re the context we work in, and they show how far a school can go:

• Recycling rose from 15% to 76.2% in 2025. Waste collections fell from three a week to one, and no waste goes to landfill.
• Food waste is down around 50%, with around 1 tonne a week recycled through new on-site processing.
• More than a third of the College’s vehicles are electric.
• The grounds: all tree waste is mulched and 95% of green waste is composted on site. A fifth of the 400-acre estate is a Local Nature Reserve, with over 120 bird boxes and over 70,000 pollinator bulbs.
• The target is carbon neutral by 2030.

Figures from Wellington College, October 2026.

Following our proposals, the College committed over £500,000, and my partner and I won £60,000 of College investment for reusable containers.

The Sustainability Cup launches in January 2027.