As part of the nationwide Big Green Week from 12-16 June, Varndean College hosted a number of lunchtime talks from prominent organisations involved in sustainability and conservation work to preserve natural habitats, to those involved in promoting biodiversity, campaign organisations focussed on the damaging impact of deforestation and highlighting the topical issues around intensive farming, the meat industry and livestock rearing.

Students also heard the inspirational personal journey of Nicola Peel, an environmental solutionist who gave an account of her 20 years of working in the Ecuadorian Amazon coordinating a number of environmental and social projects. She also spoke about Biomimicry and how scientists are exploring its importance in improving technology, architecture, material design and even textiles by learning from the world around us.

Students were also given an account of the work of Greenpeace by a climate justice campaigner who, through her fundraising work was able to explain how such justice could be accessed and described the crucial work to improve equality in relation to climate and social justice. She also explored the links between industrial meat production, carbon emissions and deforestation. Other talks were from Brighton Sea Life, the oldest aquarium in the world as well as the Millennium Seed Bank, who spoke about their work in conserving seeds from common, rare or endangered, useful plants. It is hoped that this work will serve as a global insurance policy that preserves the genetic resource of the most diverse, wild plant species we have on earth.