The perfect environment would be a place where you can learn outside and also utilise the green space to improve mental wellbeing and develop key life skills (personal responsibility, problem solving and teamwork for example).

It is for this reason that I try to maintain a welcoming green space outside our learning and development premises. I also sought to create a wellbeing garden that learners can tend to outside of lessons and reap the benefits of a healthy edible harvest and a quiet space to reflect in too.

This benefits the environment and promotes environmental awareness and initiatives. Examples included using the coffee grounds from the coffee machines on the gardens and upcycling pallets, pipes and green waste to build bug houses to encourage wildlife. This was built during a wellbeing session for one of the initial cohorts.

Here is one such report that promotes green spaces within learning environments.

Studies have shown that outdoor campus green spaces are considered a potential recovery environment, which helps students’ psychological recovery and attention recovery.

Green spaces may explain their influence on academic achievement and mental health through two existing theories in the current research background: Attention Recovery Theory (ART) and Stress Recovery Theory (SRT).

According to ART, students recover their ability to actively guide attention through contact with the campus green space so as to restore their overall ability to learn and perform academic tasks.

Consequently, students’ academic achievement is improved. SRT proposes that students can achieve the effect of relieving stress through biological reactions to specific attributes of the natural environment after contacting campus green spaces. These two theories show that campus green spaces can influence college students’ mental health positively.

Campus Green Spaces, Academic Achievement and Mental Health of College Students (July 2022)

Wanting Liu, Ning Sun, Jingyu Guo, and Zhenhua Zheng^*

^{Al McCrimmon}

A new study has found that soap compounds break down long before they pose an environment threat according to sciencenordic.com. A study was published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science, where they found that soap is fundamentally the same throughout the world and contains similar components. Previous studies had said soap was harmful but this new study shows that the compounds used in soap are designed to break down so fast that they don't pose a threat to the environment.

I personally like bars of soap and have changed my buying habits so that the products I buy have less packaging waste.

What soap products are available where you work - where we are it is liquid soap and this is refilled from large bottles, so at least there is a saving in packaging.