On average 20,000 single use plastic bottles are discarded each year from one high school alone.

Seven Notre Dame pupils competed in a regional competition in order to make a change that would benefit the future of their school and the environment . The idea of the competition was to give young people from the west of Scotland an opportunity to voice their views about how they should deal with popular environmental problems that face our world today. Then the winning school would receive £1000 to make their idea become a reality.

By noticing the amount of single use plastics highs schools where using , seven pupils from Note Dame came up with the idea of giving everyone in their school re usable water bottles. Which would encourage pupils to re fill one bottle instead of buying numerous bottles, which would dramatically decrease the amount of single use plastics being bought. The seven pupils who were involved in this project are Niav Mckeeman, Aly Gallagher, Sona Kurucova, Ellie Stewart, Yvonne Chan, Hayden Donnelly and Matthew Slaven.

 

The group first presented their idea to a panel in the West College, Scotland where they highlighted the dangers of single use plastics to the environment and were delighted to hear that the had progressed into the final. The final took place in the West of Scotland university and hosted schools from all over Scotland, However it was the bright idea from Notre Dame pupils that won the competition. Shortly afterwards, a company called  Morrisons Construction who promote a number of different projects across Scotland, contacted the school to help in the process of getting reusable bottles. Within a couple of weeks pupils were delighted as they received their own bottle at assembly which colour co-ordinated with their house group colour.

Science teacher Mrs Flynn urges pupils to use their bottles in the fight to reduce single use plastics.