Kids profit from eco-friendly bag

Rabia in P5 entered an environmentally-friendly bag design competition run by the school’s productive eco committee.

The 100 bags sold out at a price of £3.50 per bag, netting the school a neat 53pence per bag, which will be reinvested to help fund a future eco project.

Teacher Mrs Ewington, who is on the pupil-led committee, told The Extra: “In the event of recent regulations on using bags, the committee wanted to extend the message to encourage people to keep their streets free of litter and to re-use bags. We ran a competition and got a number of lovely entries for a design for the bags, which were made by a Dundee jute firm, keeping the eco message going.”

And, in the interest of healthy competition, the same number of bags were sold by pupils and staff – 50/50.

“That was a sheer coincidence,” said Mrs Ewington, “but a nice one.

“Parents, teachers, kids and our lollipop men bought into the idea, purchasing bags for gifts.

“Everyone was involved in the process in some way and most of the very innovative ideas come from the pupils themselves but it doesn’t stop there.

“They also are involved in every step of the process from procuring materials to desinging a marketing strategy and working out profit margins against costs.”

At a ceremony to unveil the finished designed bags, Rabia was presented with the very first bag out of the box.

The school’s eco committee has be running for a number of years and has introduced a number of valuable practices that serves the school and it’s community.

Profits from the latest venture will go towards the start of a new project to build a ‘bottle green house’.

“It’s in its incubations stages at the moment,” said Mrs Ewington, “but these funds will let us at least get started.”