Ireland’s greenest teens were honoured at the finals of this year’s ECO-UNESCO Young Environmentalist Awards, which took place Tuesday, May 23rd at the Round Room in Dublin’s Mansion House.
 
At a special awards ceremony in Dublin, hosted by Ande Gray and Clara Murray, presenters of RTEjr ‘Pop goes the weekend, projects across a wide range of innovative environmental themes, designed and put into action by young people from across the island of Ireland, were selected as winners.
 
The innovative winners include pioneering projects such as the creation of vibrant bio-diverse habitats for bees; the design of a new, sustainable school as well the creation and development of micro-bead free, organic beauty products.
 
Now in their 18th year, the Young Environmentalist Awards featured projects from schools and young people between the ages of 10 and 18 across the island of Ireland. 
 
Over 80 groups were shortlisted from over 285 entries for the finals from over 4,000 young people who participated in the awards.
 
Young people from Bailieborough Community School in Bailieborough, Co Cavan, won the Senior Biodiversity Award for ‘The Rowan Project’.
 
Construction work meant the school had lost a lot of biodiversity because of deforestation. The project saw young people create, construct and design an outdoor garden and in the process re-establishing a rich biodiversity in their community.
 
In the Junior Overall category, the ‘Let it Bee’ project was the winner, which also scooped the Biodiversity Award. The work of young people from Loreto College in Swords, Dublin, provided a habitat for bees and other insects and raised awareness about the decline in bee population due to chemical sprays and the threat of pollutants to the natural world.
 
The young people in this group planted a garden, organised a concert and a drama and provided flower seeds for parents and Fingal County Council agreed to plant.
 
The Super Junior Award went to ‘ECO-Pirates’, the entry from the group from Kill O’ The Grange National School in Dublin. The project saw the group lobby for the introduction of a ‘bottle bill’, which would see a deposit levied on all glass bottles sold in the Republic and dramatically reduce the amount of plastic we use.  
 
The participants dressed up as pirates to present the bill to their Councillor, Cormac Devlin, and also did a play where they dressed up as pirates.
 
Other innovative projects included Carndonagh Community School in Donegal’s ‘Aqua Chargers’ project, which won the Senior Energy Award. It saw the group build a small, easily made hydro-electric generator that would be capable of charging a phone.
 
Blakestown Community School’s 'Recycling Rangers' project, which won the People’s Choice Awards. It saw the school increase its recycling efforts, which was then extended to the local community where the Parents Association from all the schools attended a seminar to learn about recycling properly. The green teens also raised awareness across the community by talking about the project on the local radio.
 
All shortlisted groups showcased their environmental projects during the morning session in front of an expert judging panel in the hope of winning one of ECO-UNESCO’s prestigious awards in 10 different environmental categories.
With a focus on youth action, some of the other projects saw groups building dog kennels out of non-recyclable plastic and turning used cans into Christmas decorations.
 
An important aspect of the judging is raising awareness of their chosen issue, with many learning new skills to develop films, new apps, and even rap songs to reach out to their peers and communities.
 
The annual awards programme run by ECO-UNESCO has provided over 40,000 young people, aged 10-18, an opportunity to take action and raise awareness in their own community on issues that matter the most to them, since it began in 1999.
 
The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs fund the Young Environmentalist Awards.

Winners: ECO-UNESCO 2017 Young Environmentalist Awards

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