jaffacakes – St Leos College

Why as a team did you choose to focus on this challenge?

We felt that the climate crisis was an important crisis to focus on because we are in green schools and we believe we have to preserve our planet for future generations. There are many issues in society caused by climate crisis and we felt that our community didn’t raise enough awareness or take enough action towards the ongoing climate crisis which affects our community in everyday lives.

What do you know now about the challenge that you didn't know before?

From our research we discovered that plastics and chemicals from our clothing is having a massive impact on our environment, polluting lakes,rivers and seas and as a result, destroying our eco systems. We discovered that single pair of jeans uses 3,800 liters of water alone meaning on the daily hundred to thousands of liters of water are used for our clothing industry. This brings us to our big idea to recycle from our rainwater for more sustainable use.

What have you learnt about your Hero?

Our hero is Walter the turtle. He is our hero because everyday , he and his family are being affected by plastics in the ocean. He has lost some of his family due to plastic poisoning and he is very vulnerable to being killed by either toxic chemicals or consuming plastics. His home is the Great Barrier Reef is diminishing each day and soon will be gone for good if we don’t make a change.

If you could improve one thing for your Hero what would that be?

Make everyday life easier by eliminating plastics and harmful substances in their home.

Do you have any ideas for a potential solution? No matter how raw, share them with your Mentors for feedback.

One solution that we have for this is a water filter on washing machines and tumble dryers so we use less of Walter the turtles water. By creating this we are recycling water we use everyday and also filtering out any toxic plastics and chemicals while also stopping them from entering our waters to avoid pollution.

Ask your Mentor anything …. This is a chance to ask your Mentors a direct question relating to your Big Idea.

Is there any other product or solution you can think of that would be suitable to help solve this problem?.