News

Students WOW judges at Footprint Friends Awards

04-11-09 9:48 BIFM

Ten schools from around the country were selected as the finalists for the Footprint Friends ‘Wipe Out Waste’ (WOW) Awards, which took place on Tuesday 3^rd November.

Eco social networking group Footprint Friends, invited the ten finalists to pitch their sustainable ideas in a Dragon’s Den format presentation at the Frontline Club in Paddington, London. BIFM CEO, Ian Fielder joined the panel of ‘Dragons’ to help judge the event.

Ideas ranged from meat free Mondays to recycling school uniforms, making it a challenging decision for the judges to make.

However, a decision was reached after all ten presentations were made, and the decision was:

In joint third place was Park School in Lancashire with Local Milk for All, and St Luke’s Science and Sports College in Devon with Project Gold.

Park School delivered a thought provoking presentation, suggesting that milk bottles replace the tetra milk cartons, which are not easily recycled. St. Luke’s Science and Sports College introduced Project Gold – a well researched campaign that recognised waste through ‘litter’ to be one of the biggest problems, and wanted to bring in a giant composter for biodegradable food containers and waste foods.

In second place was Smithycroft Secondary School in Glasgow with What a Load of Rubbish. Their WOW idea was to introduce an environmentally friendly equivalent to polystyrene dinnerware throughout schools in the UK, therefore eliminating the need to utilise precious space in landfill sites.

And winning the competition, in first place was Canon Burrows C.E. Primary School in Tameside with Stop throwing away perfectly good pencils! The dragons were presented with a prototype of a pencil holder, designed to grip the pencils from full size until it has been completely used. This simple but effective idea was well researched and won the hearts and minds of the dragons, and even the sponsorship from PowerPerfector, who were also the sponsors of the WOW Awards!

The winning school will have their WOW idea rolled out throughout all schools in the UK, and receive a complimentary PowerPerfector unit installed, enabling the school to potentially reduce their energy usage by up to 20%!

BIFM CEO and ‘Dragon’ Ian Fielder congratulated the winning team on demonstrating the ‘E Factor’ – environmental, educational, engaging and effective.

He said: “All school have come up with bright and innovative schemes with many of them well thought out and based on excellent solutions. For a scheme to be a true WOW it has to have the E Factor! The winning solution of providing a recycled pencil holder that holds a pencil right down the a stub, thus preventing throwing away 55 million short pencils a year was simple, effective and epitomised the thinking behind the WOW Awards.”