Gala opening for 'Green Wall' pollution-busting initiative at St Mary's Primary School

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is to perform the official opening of the 'Chiswick Oasis' at St Mary's Primary School on 29 June. The event will be open to the public.

This Friday morning, the leader of Hounslow Council, Cllr Steve Curran, visited St Mary’s school and saw the new 126-metre-long living wall with its 12,000 plants.

Andrea Carnvali (on left) of the Chiswick Oasis, with Steve Curran

1500 new plants were being delivered to the school, ready to be installed into the wall. Everyone attending the launch, including the Mayor, will get the chance to add one plant to the green wall and then mark it with their own name.

The launch will also be attended by the Mayor of Hounslow, Cllr Tony Louki, as well as local MP Ruth Cadbury local councillors and other dignitaries.

They will be shown the Clean Air initiative as well as the Green Wall, the plants, the air purifiers and the "air purifying paint” from Airlite, which, since it has been applied in the dining hall two weeks ago, seems have brought down the level of NO2 by a staggering 95%.

Cllr Louki will be asked to pick up a random winner for the #NoCarFriday of the previous day. The prize will be a free meal for two at The Italian Job in Devonshire Road. This new initiative encourages children to walk or take public transport to school, avoiding car journeys.

It is envisaged that the site will eventually be made available for fairs, markets and community events, outside of school hours. Chiswick Park Enjoy-Work is in community partnership with St Mary’s to support the sustainability project, which also benefited from funding from the Mayor's Office. In October 2018 the Mayor of London awarded £32,000 as “one of London’s best civic initiatives”. Several celebrities got on board and sent various video messages endorsing the project: David Dimbleby, Jeremy Paxman, Claudia Winkleman, Emma Thompson among several others. In less than three months the newly named “Chiswick Oasis” raised almost £100,000.

Chiswick Oasis have also signed a contract with Trees for Cities, a UK based charity which will be working towards the creation of a vegetable/edible garden with construction and implementation hoped to start from sometime in September.

Children pictured before the project, wearing face masks to protect them from air pollution

‘Chiswick Oasis' was launched last September by a group of parents from St. Mary's and William Hogarth primary schools, which are immediately adjacent to the proposed site of the project at the southern end of Duke Road. The schools' grounds run alongside the A4, a major six-lane road which carries up to 100,000 motor vehicles every day.

Air pollution levels surveys carried out around William Hogarth School and Cavendish Primary, as well as St Mary's, had found that all three were experiencing high levels of pollution, mainly due to the proximity of busy main roads. In the case of St Mary's approximately 47,300 vehicles per day travel on the core roads within a 200m radius of the school, which the report said is within the upper quartile for traffic volumes amongst the 50 schools assessed as part of the programme.

June 22, 2019