David Bellamy opens Environmental and Global Centre at Cambridge School » Environment » 24dash.com

David Bellamy OBE, the well known botanist and environmental campaigner, opened a brand new, purpose built Environmental and Global Centre at Swavesey Village School near Cambridge. The new centre incorporates a number of energy saving devices including a solar thermal domestic hot water system donated by Baxi Group.

Students belonging to the Energy Monitoring Club showed guests how they were monitoring electricity use in the whole school, and how this was encouraging everyone to turn off unused lights, computers and sockets. Then they could also calculate their carbon and financial savings.

Following an introduction by Yvonne Baker, CEO of STEMnet*, David Bellamy addressed the gathering. “We need to hear about good news stories like Swavesey,” he said. “In all my travels around the world, I am finding more and more organisations that are getting together and doing something to help make a real difference. This is a fantastic resource and I have great pleasure in declaring it officially open.”

Vice Principal Steve Howard then explained how Swavesey Village College has been a Specialist Science College since 2003, and is considered to be a centre of excellence. “It is important that we don’t just teach young people about environmental matters, but that they understand how they can apply what they learn to the real world, and that is what we would like to achieve with this new centre.”

Water to the toilets and kitchen in the building is heated using a Baxi Solarflo flat plate collector installed on an A frame on the flat roof of the building. The solar controller and Heatrae Sadia twin coil water storage cylinder is housed in a glass panelled cabinet to allow pupils to see how the unit works.

The building also features a rainwater harvesting system and has been built using energy efficient methods and insulation products. As well as Baxi Group, a number of other companies have contributed products for the building.

For more information on Baxi Solarflo please visit www.baxi.co.uk/solar or telephone 0844 871 1525.
- ends -

* STEMnet is a government funded organisation whose aim is to ensure that that ALL schools and colleges across the UK have access to the information and support they need to offer their students access to appropriate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Enrichment and Enhancement (E&E) schemes and programmes which support the curriculum and increase the quality and quantity of students moving into further STEM education, training and employment.

For media information, please contact:
Jocelynne Rowan, PR Officer, Baxi
T: 01926 478291 M: 07825 602043 F: 01772 646449
E: jocelynne.rowan@baxigroup.com

Check out the Baxi on-line press office: www.baxi.co.uk/press