Energy Bonus for Pihkapuisto Elementary School
The pupils of Pihkapuisto Elementary School inspire the whole school to take part in monitoring energy consumption. The school also has plans for energy spying. The school was awarded Helen’s Energy Bonus prize.
Energy Bonus is a prize of EUR 2,000 awarded by Helen every year as an incentive for Helsinki schools to develop their environmental activities. The Energy Bonus encourages young people to come up with ideas furthering sustainable development and energy-saving. This was the twelfth time the award was given.
This year’s Energy Bonus is awarded to the Pihkapuisto Elementary School.
“As well as good environmental work, the reasons for the prize are the engagement of the whole school in promoting energy-saving through a comic book and making the monitoring of energy consumption a part of the school’s daily life,” says Pirjo Jantunen, Environmental Expert from Helen.
The Pihkapuisto schoolchildren’s entry employed the medium of comic strip narration.
“This inspired the pupils to produce sequels for the comic book,” says Milja Collins, a class teacher at the school.
Energy spying and the school’s own Energy AwarenessWeek
In their entry, the schoolchildren say that the Sävel Plus service is new to the school, and the aim of the Energy Awareness Week at school is for every class to learn how to monitor the school's energy consumption through the service. The pupils of the environmental group also demonstrate the direction of the energy consumption using traffic lights. The environmental group members use energy spying to monitor the energy usage of each class (lights, electrical equipment, temperature, sorting etc). They check that classrooms are adequately lit by using a light intensity meter and apply lighting guidelines issued accordingly.