Eco savvy Lancashire pupils create booklets on celebrating festivals in ways that don't cost the earth

Lancashire school pupils have shown how to celebrate festivals in an eco-friendly way in a series of craft and cookery booklets.
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The Eco-Festival initiative has seen youngsters from schools ranging from Penwortham High and St Stephen’s primary school in Preston to Lancaster Royal Grammar School joining together to share ways to mark festivals with minimal waste of resources and save money too.

The LEAP Voices of Youth team gathered together online over the past year to create the booklets which are aimed at busy parents, families and friends. They say the booklets contain recipes, art and craft projects set out “in the shortest and simplest way possible”.

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The eco conscious members of the Voices of Youth group who created the festival celebration leafletsThe eco conscious members of the Voices of Youth group who created the festival celebration leaflets
The eco conscious members of the Voices of Youth group who created the festival celebration leaflets
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The project was spearheaded by Daruk Pal from Lancaster Royal Grammar School (LRGS) who is on his school’s Green Team

He said :“I came up with the idea of making booklets that encourage families to make things at home for festivals rather than buy

them, as a way that will make a large impact towards a sustainable future for our and future generations.”

Now Daruk wants to keep up the momentum and is working on a project to help families assess how best to make energy savings.

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Daniel Rajczyk from Penwortham Priory Academy led on the creation of the Eco-Christmas booklet. He said: “Everyone

thinks: ‘How can my doing anything make a difference to a huge problem like global warming?’ and even I used to

think something like that...I was astonished to see how just a handful of us were able to come up with a really useful booklet.”

Seven year old Pavan Patel, who is part of the eco council at St Stephen’s Primary School in Preston, said: “Whether it be cereal packet Christmas trees, clay and flour diyas (lamps) or ground almond frogs, the booklets show you how to use biodegradeable materials and reuse household recyclable items.”

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Another student Maryam Musa from Penwortham Girls High School who led on the Eco-Eid booklet emphasised the booklet showed how to uphold cultural traditions with a minimum waste of resources in an economical way.

Deeya Goodwin of Howick C of E Primary School, Penwortham, said: “All religions guide us proactively to respect the environment, minimise waste and live in a way that maintains the balance and harmony of nature. Yet we create a lot of waste by buying things for festivals which waste resources both in the materials used and in transporting these things.”

Lancaster Girls Grammar school student Rachael Dabble lead on the Eco-Passover booklet. Most of the booklet covers were designed by Anuhya Asin (Anshi), from Scotforth St Paul’s C of E primary school, Lancaster.

The Eco-Diwali book was launched at the Hindu Forum of Britain’s virtual House of Commons Diwali.

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The project teams also included Naisha Soni from Moorside school, Vedha Patil from Lancaster Girls Grammar School, Vishwa Venkataraghavan from Lancaster Royal Grammar school and and 10 year old Abhinav Ranjan.

The project was supported and enabled by Lancaster Environment Action Protection (LEAP Lancashire). LEAP’s voluntary director for schools Kailash Parekh praised the “very hard work all these children have put into protecting our future and our beautiful planet” and the support and encouragement received from Lancashire County and Lancaster City Councils for the project.

To see the guides see www.leaplancashire.org.uk and look on the LEAP Actions page

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