Active Sustainability Group

Interview with Mr Ben Hartley, the School Marshal

What is a School Marshal? Will Spedding (PS4) met with Mr Hartley, our new School Marshal, to learn more about his role and how his work affects us all.

Most of us are blissfully oblivious to the role of School Marshal and yet it is, arguably, one of the most vital to the smooth running of the school. Mr Ben Hartley joined us as School Marshal in October 2021 and was happy to meet up to explain more about the job and, in particular, the roles we can all play in making a practical difference to our shared living environment.

Mr Hartley was born and raised in Kent and went to The Judd School before joining the police force for 22 years as a firearms instructor in both Kent and London. From there he went to Kings Canterbury, before returning to the area to become our School Marshal in October 2021. Mr Hartley works as an operations manager of sorts, tasked with overseeing the staggering workload of the Porters, Domestic services and the Laundry team, as well as everything from car park management, deliveries and fire alarms.

We should all stop for a minute and applaud the Porters. Described by Mr Hartley as the ‘magicians of the school’, the Porters, headed up by Vesh, work in the background to organise and facilitate everything and anything, from our social events to our exam rooms. More thanks should then go to the amazing Domestic Services staff, who work tirelessly to keep our school clean and pleasant to be in. And finally, boarders in particular should thank the brilliant team who work away in the laundry, washing the tens of thousands of items of clothing and bedding every week, all year round. Accompanied by the team of Mrs Reeves, Miss Biernaczyk and Mrs Trask, Mr Hartley organises the movements of all these people, as well as whatever random requests walk into the Porter’s Lodge every day. Mr Hartley and his team are a friendly bunch, so do say hello as you pass.

But more recently, Mr Hartley has been focusing on an audit from Countrystyle, who have the unenviable task of removing all the rubbish we generate on site, be that general rubbish, DMR (Dry, Mixed Recycling – that’s paper, card, tins and bottles to you or me) or food waste. It’s no lie that almost every one of us will throw things away into the wrong bins, whether it’s down to being late from break to Period 4, or simply out of sheer laziness. But after a recent inspection from Countrystyle, the conclusion that was drawn was that as a school we can do considerably better on streaming waste. Mr Hartley will be meeting with them later in the term to decide how we can, in the long term, improve our performance. One of the areas that was highlighted was cardboard, especially that which comes from deliveries. Whether it’s the flood of Domino’s pizzas on Tuesday nights, or the torrent of Amazon Prime boxes which go to the school throughout the week, we are no strangers to them. The problem is not just the staggering number, but the fact that if simply thrown away in their cubic form, bins fill up after almost 4 or 5 of these boxes, bins which could have facilitated days’ worth of waste otherwise. This ends up costing the school far more and reduces our efficiency as a school.

Another common problem, which I’m sure you will all have heard a thousand times, is the mixing of recycling and food waste. A bin can be 95% filled with recyclable material, but as soon as an odd banana skin is carelessly thrown in there,

it becomes part of ‘General Waste’, and must separately be sent off. Put simply, recycling more is not only good for the planet, but also saves the school money (as we are charged less per ‘bin lift’ for recycling than general waste). What Mr Hartley proposes is that if we can get these simple things right, with the boring things such as bins, then the money which is saved from such can be collected and directed towards ideas that boys put forward, hopefully things far more interesting than bins.

So, watch this space for a re-launch of the school’s recycling programme – new bins, new signage, and a push from the ASG and others to make it easier for us to recycle. It’s been over seven years since the last review, so this bin overhaul is well overdue. Fnally, as is the custom, Mr Hartley kindly answered a couple of questions about himself.

If you were stuck on a desert island with an iPod and three albums, what would they be?

All Mod Cons – The Jam Okay Computer – Radiohead Stars of CCTV – Hard-Fi

If you weren’t at Tonbridge, where would you be?

I’d probably in some sort of log cabin up in North America with the bears.

Biodiesel at Tonbridge

As part of the ASG’s drive for a greener future in Tonbridge, we are looking to reduce waste in as many creative ways as possible. Now, with the help of Mr Biddle and Mr Jacobs – who left us last term – we are looking at the disposal of used cooking oil. Every term, we use 705 litres of cooking oil across campus. Currently, this oil is collected by Olleco, for free. They turn this into biomethane, biodiesel, electricity and organic fertiliser, and this is sold on for money. As a school, we are currently investigating keeping some or all of this waste cooking oil onsite instead and using it to power our school vehicles. Mr Stunt, the new Head of Grounds, is currently looking into the feasibility and logistics of filtering and preparing this oil for use in some of their machines. The Grounds department currently have a Go Green initiative, requiring all new vehicles to either be electric or biodiesel-ready. All of our existing biodiesel-ready vehicles already run on a biodiesel fuel mix – diesel already mixed with reused vegetable oil from other sources. We are looking into whether it is better environmentally to convert our used cooking oil to fuel on site, or to send it away to be converted in a larger, more efficient, facility.