Creating an Eco-friendly Early Years Setting: A Practical Guide

This book offers a comprehensive guide to becoming a more eco-friendly setting, from small steps that can be taken to reduce waste and improve efficiency to setting up partnerships. It illustrates how sustainable choices can become a natural part of every child’s education and how children, parents and staff can all inspire sustainable behaviour across local communities and at national and international levels.

Covering all aspects of practice including colleague and parental engagement, the environment, routines, resources, and teaching and learning, the book helps readers and practitioners to embed a sustainable approach in day-to-day practice. It draws on recent research, studies and stories of success and failure that can be adapted to fit everyone’s own journey towards a more sustainable world. The chapters address topics such as:

• plastics and their alternatives
• sustainable food
• sustainable resourcing
• transport and trips
• waste management.

Drawing on the experiences of real nurseries and including a wide range of activities and lists of resources, this is an essential read for practitioners, leaders, policymakers and all settings that want to help make sustainable choices a natural part of young children’s lives.

Cheryl Hadland is the Founder and Managing Director of Tops Day Nurseries, Aspire Training Team and Hadland Care Group, and the early years sustainability charity, GECCO, UK.