About Campaign

Thurso High School and Thurso Community Development Trust are initiating ambitious and trend-setting movement against single-use packaging among the pupils.

In line with Cost of the School Day Programme, in 2022 Thurso High School added a food container to the list of items to be provided by the school to all children to mitigate the impact of financial inequality.

Over the academic year 2022/2023, only 4 % of pupils remembered to bring their reusable container to Hospitality Classes every time, which resulted in giving away over a thousand of single use containers by the school to the pupils over the year. And even though potentially recyclable, the single use aluminum containers would need to be washed first and then put into the correct bin, while in reality, almost 100% of the food containers have been discarded soiled into the general waste, according to the team of Thurso High janitors.

This, together with other categories of single-use packaging waste such as disposable water bottles and snack wraps, poses the issue of a troubling scale, on the school grounds.

Thurso Community Development Trust teamed up with Thurso High to run a pilot project of introducing reusable container scheme for the Hospitality classes, based on earning merits and prizes for returning  the borrowed  containers or remembering to bring their own.

As a member of Highland Community Waste Partnership, Thurso CDT lead on the objective of promoting reusable packaging and fighting single use items.

Our ambition is to make the hashtag “#beasolution” viral on national, or even global scale. What we need to do is change behaviours. Responsible waste management has to become trendy and popular with our young people. That’s why the reusable container pilot project is only a part of a multifaceted campaign that will encompass all the pupils of Thurso High School, not only those who attend Hospitality classes.

The campaign includes raising awareness on the subject of single use packaging and its harmful impact, promoting good recycling habits, competitions between the school houses, creative contests for all pupils, some changes in the administrative processes around informing parents about forgotten containers, creating a lot of engaging visual and digital content and of course – great prizes for the most active participants.

The leadership in social media campaign is in the hands of the pupils themselves. Newly formed Sustainability Committee, formed of the school prefects, will become creative designers of the #beasolution campaign.

#Beasolution campaign will run on all social media channels - Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to get as much attention on as many levels as possible. We need and count on support from families, children, community organizations, businesses and governmental agencies to make this movement successful and make a shift in behavioural patterns of our youth.

#beasolution