MAKING do and mending are often seen as old-fashioned skills in today’s disposable culture.

Hole in your T-shirt? Buy a new one.

Broken something? Just throw it away.

That attitude is changing now, though, with the rise and rise of environmentally friendly practices of recycling.

The green challenge facing us all is also one of the reasons that pupils at Pitmaston Primary School, Malvern Road, St John’s, Worcester, spent their spring term focusing on sustainabilty.

The topic has run through almost every subject at the school including literacy, numeracy and science.

Assistant headteacher Jane Cambridge said: “We worked with two other Worcestershire schools on a garden at the spring show in Malvern.

“It was about taking scrap metal and things you would throw away and making this wonderful creation for the Tin Forest, which is also a book they have studied.”

Youngsters in key stage two have also been working with the Duckworth Trust, which donated some seeds for the children to plant.

She said: “We have had lettuces and radishes and we will use it to produce some soup.”

Some of the schoolchildren brought in old T-shirts and used buttons, ribbons and fabric to create new items of clothes, which were for sale at the school’s fete on Friday.

Their hard work has paid off recently after they were awarded eco flag status.

The flag award is part of an international initiative that aims to see whole schools take action on the environment.

The award was partly due to the hard work of the school’s eco committee, which was made up of 29 children who helped to find ways that the school could make itself green.

Mrs Cambridge said: “They took meter readings, monitored equipment use and the lights left on.

“The readings were used in ICT and maths lessons as a way of monitoring data.”

Melanie Poole, the school’s eco coordinator, said: “The pupils have been so committed.

“It wasn’t until we set out to show the green flag assessors what we were doing that we realised how much there was.

“The children can already see recycling going on a home and they can now see a purpose for it.

“I believe they have to do something that’s achieveable to them.

“If you present them with a huge oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico they can’t do anything about that.

“I think it’s about small steps and if everybody makes a small step there’s something we can do to help and gradually that builds up into something quite substantial.

“But it has to be achievable and manageable to them.” Mrs Cambridge said: “They are always telling us as teachers, reuse that or let me put that in the recycling for you.

“They are also growing seeds and they say ‘can I take these four seeds and plant them at home?’”

According to Mrs Cambridge, the slogan traditionally associated with recycling of reduce, reuse, recycle has been joined by three more Rs of refuse, repair, rethink.

It is the rethinking part that the school has particularly been concentrating on.

Mrs Poole said: “It’s all about their thinking skills.

“It has impressed me so much.

“We hope those skills will be reflected in later life.

“We are trying to encourage the children not to take things at face value.”

The sustainability topic has been immersed into school life on a wider front as well.

The school recently swapped its school meal suppliers and will now be served by local firm Roots.

Sue Bladen, the school’s business manager, said: “We have changed to a very local supplier and we will be taking our pupils to see where their food is grown and showing them all the way through to how it’s cooked in the school kitchen.

“We are also having a full print audit for all of the printing in school and the costs of printers to run and will be looking at alternatives.”

Next year the school pupils will create their own garden at the Malvern showground.

They will also have to prove that they can carrying on building on their eco-friendly initiatives to retain their green flag status.