This December 4 pupils from the Gracemount High School Eco Committee were chosen to attend the ‘Make Waste History’ summit in the Assembly Rooms on George Street.

Sophie Alvarado, Hannah Brunton, Chloe Pearson and Abby Maule (all S1) attended and took part in several workshops, all aimed at reducing the amount of waste we produce.

In one workshop we were learning how to compost food waste, and making our own mini composters. In another we were designing and making smoothies, using a bicycle-powered blender!

The third was called ‘Canny Kitchens’ which taught how to reduce the amount of food which we throw away, through ‘canny’ buying and cooking.

In another workshop there was a competition to design a new product which would help to reduce food waste. Hannah and Chloe came up with the idea of a ‘thinking’ toaster which never burns your toast – and they won!

There was also a talk by Smithy Croft High School who are campaigning to have all the plastic and polystyrene dinner ware in their canteen replaced by re-useable plates and cutlery. Did you know that schools in Scotland throw away millions of pieces of plastic cutlery and polystyrene plates every year?

The summit gave us lots of think about and hopefully we will be putting some of our ideas into practice with the rest of the Eco Committee very soon, and helping  to reduce our waste here at Gracemount.

Mrs K Mountford
Teacher of Modern Languages
Gracemount High School