Designing a Litter Free Future

Designing a Litter Free Future

Pupils from a Skegness school have won a litter-themed competition to create a design to go on the side of a double decker bus.

The main local bus company, Stagecoach East Midlands are supporting Keep Britain Tidy, and they asked local school children to come up with a design to promote their anti-litter message.

The competition also marked the return of the Skegness ‘Seasider’ open-top buses run by stagecoach and loved by locals and tourists alike. Children’s books have even been created to bring the buses to life. The latest book has a litter theme. As well as getting the chance to see their winning design on local buses, the winning school will get £500 from Stagecoach, and Keep Britain Tidy will also get £500 to help fund their anti-litter campaign.

Keep Britain tidy will host an environmental education event at the winning school, to teach children about the importance of looking after the environment.

The winning design

Stagecoach were delighted that 150 pupils entered the competition, so they chose 2 winners instead of one. They put a union jack design on one side of the bus and an aquatic design on the other. The aquatic design was chosen because of the recent headlines about looking after our oceans and the current problems with rubbish ending up in the oceans and killing wildlife.

The anti-litter bus visited the winning school, Beacon Primary Academy, where pupils also took part in an educational event. Cheques for £500 were presented to the school and to Keep Britain Tidy.

The school’s head teacher emphasised that children are capable of starting a process of change so that each generation will be involved in looking after the environment.

Getting children involved

The competition and wider educational campaign is aimed at encouraging the next generation to care about their environment.

Stagecoach show their support

Keep Britain Tidy expressed their delight that Stagecoach have supported the Great British Spring Clean, and that this has helped to draw attention to it and make it more popular than ever. The anti-litter bus and the story books that have been created will hopefully make it clear that it is the minority of people who don’t care about the environment and their local area.