Schools use a lot of books, routinely ordering new and updated ones; the older ones remain useful reference guides, but stacks of them sit around not being used.

At Dane Court Grammar School our core values are being caring, open-minded, and principled - this extends to all aspects of our school life, one example being our sixth form IB diploma CAS programme which encourages students to engage with the UN sustainable development goals to support global growth and prosperity through tackling world issues. As such we were concerned about the environmental impact that we would have by disposing of these stacks of textbooks that we no longer needed but were of usable quality; we wanted to be principled and caring and support the UN goals of 'quality education' and 'responsible consumption'.

Last year Mr Rye (CAS co-ordinator) arranged for some representatives of the charity Books2Africa to come into school and deliver a lunchtime lecture about their mission to promote a culture of ‘readcycling’ and improve the quality of education in Africa, through the collection, processing, shipping and distribution of quality books, computers and educational materials that equip individuals, institutions, and communities to acquire knowledge and achieve their full potential in a globalised world. They told us that there are an estimated 13 million books (7,500 tonnes) going to landfill every year in the UK alone and around 202 million students who attend school in Sub-Saharan Africa who are not able to read or write properly after finishing school due to lack of quality educational resources.

A number of students were inspired by this and spoke to Mr Rye about organising a collection of old books from the departments around the school; they also wanted to raise funds to support Books2Africa with the transport and distribution of the books. The team of students have worked hard this year to visit the different teaching departments around the school, request old teaching books, and bring piles of them down to a central collection point. They then spent hours going through every single book to check for graffiti and damage to ensure that the books we donate are suitable and usable.

We are hugely grateful to Andrews of Kent for donating packing boxes and tape to the school, allowing the student team to then package our collection into an amazing 65 boxes (1,300 kg) of books. The students ran a charity event in the run-up to Christmas, selling candy canes to be delivered to friends and teachers within the school. Combined with some of the money raised from our charity events on World Book Day, we raised £600 to support the processing and transport of our boxes. Books2Africa track the shipments of books they distribute to African countries and share the information with us so that we will be able to see the impact these books will have to support quality education.

We are hugely proud of our sixth form students for taking action to reduce waste, promote reuse and recycling, and recognise our responsibility to support others around the world who do not have access to the resources we take for granted.