The Young Reducers

Davis College Mallow

Project 2020-016

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The Young reducers of Davis College, Mallow saw the amount of single use plastic in their school and took action. Their aim was not only to ban single use plastic, but to create a new schoolwide legislation that would ban plastic long into the future, with yearly inductions for first years. When the principle got behind them and signed the contract, the young reducers were set off on a mission to reduce the young offenders (plastic!).

 

The project started off with a video to raise awareness around their goal. And it wasn’t just any video, they featured many age groups and nationalities in order to show the connection with the wider community and global issues. They even managed to get Demi Oviawe, Star of the ‘Young Offenders’, to star in their video to help bring awareness to the campaign, which went far and wide to the local newspaper and all over social media.

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Actions taken:

• Worked with the Tidy Towns collecting litter and selling their reusable cups.

• A poster competition, quiz and free draw for any student with reusable bottle during climate action week. 

• Visited all classes in the school to talk about plastic pollution and key solutions. 

• Held fun workshops on making shampoo bars and moisturizing bars and plastic free sanitary products

• We organised ‘a bring your own reusable bottle yoga’ class. 

• Held a plastic free 'Valentine's day’ bake sale. 

• We replaced plastic bottles with can o water in the canteen. 

• We spoke to student council and Bolywatife joined our team to help us fight against  single use plastic in our school.

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Judges Comments:

Well done! Small actions add up and all your contributed to your school being much more environmentally friendly. We were impressed by how you put on such a diversity of workshops and the passion you used to engage as much of the wider community as you could. We hope you dream even bigger!