Air Quality Workshops – FAQs

Our answers to your questions about an ARM Environments free air quality workshop in schools.

If you'd like to sign your school up for a workshop, jump to the booking form here.

What’s this all about? 

Air pollution.  We are on a mission to help improve air quality, especially indoors.  Schools are an ideal place to start.

What’s on offer here? 

We are offering to send you, for free, a snazzy ‘filter box kit’, and the associated guidance, so that you can deliver a simple, but highly effective, workshop with kids in a school classroom.

Why does air quality matter? 

Air quality has an enormous impact on everyone’s health.  Bad air quality causes a multitude of problems, some being more obvious than others.  Of course Covid-19 was widely known, and kids and staff with asthma, bronchitis, COPD, or other conditions can often be triggered by airborne pollutants.  

I work at a school, why might I care about this? 

This is a chance to deliver, at no cost to you, an interesting, educational engagement that will boost your kids’ health, and hopefully spark an interest in all the things that matter most in life – kids will learn about their health, wellbeing, sustainability and our environment.  

Do I have to buy this air quality kit?  

No. It is completely free for you.  When a school is signed up, it will receive the filter box kit and associated guidance, at no cost.  

How is this free – surely everything costs something?

Yes it does!  But it’s taken care of. The kits plus all the stuff needed to make the campaign thrive have been fully funded. Huge thanks go to:

• The Engineering Services Training Trust (ESTT), a charity who support awareness campaigns in the Engineering industry with a particular focus on training young people, have fully funded the purchase of the filter box kits.  
• Similarly, ARM Environments has covered the costs of running this campaign.
• And the Building & Engineering Services Association (BESA) are helping to promote it as part of their indoor air quality expert group.

Everything has been arranged so it is as easy as possible for schools to participate, and the biggest hurdle was cost – so jointly we eradicated that barrier by making it completely free for participants.

Is this a new initiative? 

We’re very experienced with delivering & supporting this service – most notably when both the BBC and ITV covered the positive impact this has on school kids.

What are the timescales for this?  

Sign up whilst the funding enables you to!  The kit would otherwise cost you £220.  The kit is purchased upon a school placing an order with us, so there might be some weeks between the order being placed and delivery – this timing is necessary, it’s one of the details that enable us to keep this free for schools. 

What will we receive?  

You’ll receive one package in the post.  Inside are four square filters, a 30cm adjustable speed fan, and some paper tape.  With a focus on sustainability and making this free-of-charge to you, the guidance is electronic – emailed to you at sign-up and also found on the ARM Environments website.

The fan packaging is used to create an eco-friendly box structure to hold the filters – a further sustainability talking point with the students.

These box-filters are lower cost than traditional air purifiers with a similar performance, making them perfect for schools. Also called Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, we developed these cost-effective, completely DIY air filter kits using ePM1 55% efficient filters that use a mini-pleat design for a long service life. The kit is fun and easy to assemble in no time at all, and a multi-speed fan means that the noise from the box-filter will not be excessive. 

We don’t know about air quality, can we get some help? 

Yes.  We have engaged with a number of industry experts via our supporter, BESA. These specialists can select a school to propose donating their time to deliver the workshop.

What do we do with the filter box kit after the workshop? 

This is up to you after running the workshop.

1. For optimal air quality, we recommend you keep the assembled kit, locate the filter-box in the classrooms to provide clean air for the students to breathe.  If you elect to continue running them, this gives you an additional opportunity to show the filters ‘greying’ over time, demonstrating to the kids how well it performs, and sparking a discussion about what the filters are capturing from the air instead of being breathed into our lungs.
2. Recycle it.
3. Donate it to another school with whom you are connected.
4. Pay for the delivery fee to post it back to us (at 22 High Street, Alderbury, SP5 3DU), so that another school can benefit from it.

How long is this workshop?  

The workshop is designed to last an hour, 20 minutes of education, 40 minutes of filter-box building.

Ok, we're ready to sign up. What do we have to do?

You need to:

1. Request delivery of the filter box kit, by signing a school up (3-5mins).  
2. Have somebody talk with your kids (60 mins).
3. Pay for the electricity to run the filter fan inside the kit.  Electricity costs – less than £10 per year per filter box kit based on summer 2024 average electricity pricing.

Sign up for a free air workshop at your school