Pupils at Rosneath Primary School have won an award in a national competition to tackle marine litter across Scotland.
Environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful’s STEM the Flow competition encouraged pupils to investigate and design solutions to stop marine litter at source as part of the national Upstream Battle campaign.
The challenge invited pupils to investigate #Source2Sea litter in their area, identify issues, raise awareness and design an engineering-based solution to the problem.
Building on the success of previous regional competitions, the online national pilot project was open to schools across Scotland.
Participants worked as a team to create a project plan, conduct research, conceptualise a solution, and showcase their idea.
Rosneath Primary visited their local waterways to document the local litter problem, recording the amount and types of litter found.
They then surveyed local residents and businesses to determine the awareness of marine litter in the community.
From this they concluded that the litter hotspots were the shore/beach and that the main type of litter was plastic, which informed their design solution.
One voter said: “The children carried out surveys to gauge what local families already knew about the issue and then took on the task of researching further and educating those who could positively create change.”
Joe Oxley-Glenister, education and learning officer at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: “It was fantastic to see such a range of innovative, sustainable and collaborative entries to the first national STEM the Flow competition.
“There was representation from across Scotland, from Dumfries & Galloway to Dundee and South Lanarkshire to the Isle of Arran.
“It was evident that all the participants were passionate and motivated to address source to sea litter in their local area, by completing thorough investigations to identify how the issue was impacting their community and raising awareness of these as part of their STEM the Flow projects.
“I’d like to congratulate all our winners and everyone who entered. We had a wonderful response to our first national competition, with some excellent, inspiring and thought-provoking projects.”
Entries were submitted to an online showcase and then went to a public vote, garnering almost 1,000 votes overall.
Five category awards – made from reclaimed marine plastic and recycled wood – were won, recognising the breadth of work that went into the projects.
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