Students from La Mare de Carteret, Castel and St Mary & St Michael Primary Schools have been confirmed as winners of the Bailiwick School Eco Challenge 2021 run by Guernsey Electricity and Guernsey Post.
The competition, which is in its second-year challenges students to think of innovative ideas to improve their schools' sustainability.
The challenge launched in April and received nearly 70 entries from across the Island. Students were asked to submit drawings of their designs and an explanation of how they would be implemented.
Ellena Loveridge, age 6 of St Mary & St Michael Primary School came out top in the age 6 to 8 category with her idea of recycling the schools old wooden play equipment using a wood shredder to create natural wood chip ground covering to help the environment.
The judges met with the shortlisted entries for the age 9 to 12 category but couldn't choose between the final two and announced them both winners. Marla Naftel's entry for La Mare de Carteret Primary school was a clever plan to replace the school's bottled water fountains and by designing a special water filter system to utilise rainwater for drinking.
Castel Primary School's entry from brother and sister duo, Isabella and Tomos Powis included a detailed presentation and video to create a fully sustainable fruit and veg patch the whole school could get involved in. This included everything from composting fruit peelings from lunch boxes to collecting rainwater for the plants, to selling the organic produce at local farmers markets and investing the profits back into the garden.
Imogen Berryman, Guernsey Electricity said
"The Eco challenge is proving to be a popular annual initiative for Bailiwick students. We're pleased to hear that many schools included the challenge within lessons this year. It's great to see students as young as 6 thinking about what they can do as individuals".
Bethan Griffiths, Marketing Assistant at Guernsey Post said
"We had some really fantastic concepts on our shortlist this year and it was really tough to narrow it down. We are really pleased with how many entries we had, and the winners should be proud of themselves. We hope the prize money can go some way to help the schools implement some of the initiatives."