A PAIR of artistic pupils are the toast of Milne’s Primary School in Fochabers after winning a design competition promoting recycling in Moray.
Images by Catherine Lewis and Ailsa Young came out on top in a competition to mark the rolling out of the new blue and purple recycling containers throughout the rest of Moray.
Moray Council’s Recycle for Moray campaign set primary school pupils the challenge of designing new images to feature on their promotional display vehicle, and were overwhelmed when they received almost 250 entries from youngsters across Moray.
The hard task of picking the winning entries fell to Councillor Fiona Murdoch, past chair of the economic development and infrastructure services committee of Moray Council, assisted by Council Convener Stewart Cree.
The overall winner was P6 pupil Ailsa who has won a family bowling voucher to Bowl 2000. As the P1-3 winner, Catherine receives a family voucher to the Moray Playhouse. As well as their own prizes, the pair have won £200 of art and craft materials from Krafty Kids in Elgin for their school.
Councillor Murdoch, now deputy chair of economic development and infrastructure committee, said: “There was such a huge response – and so many brilliant entries – that the Convener and I had a very difficult time choosing the winners. The judging was done ‘blind’ so we didn’t know until later that both the winners were from Milne’s Primary – there must be a strong artistic streak in the school and so I’m sure they will using the school prize of £200 on art materials.
“The families of the individual winners will be able to see their posters on the council’s recycling promotional vehicle – and enjoy either a cinema or bowling outing as their prize.
“Thanks to everyone who took part in helping us raise awareness of the importance of recycling – it is for the future of our children that we must reuse or recycle all that we can.”
After the successful introduction of the blue and purple bins in rural areas, 65,400 bins have been delivered to 32,700 properties in the Forres, Keith, Buckie, Lossiemouth, Elgin and Speyside areas.
The huge exercise was completed earlier this month and is the latest stage in the council’s ongoing drive to encourage recycling and reduce the volume of waste going to the landfill site at Dallachy.
Last year alone the council paid over £2million in landfill tax. Reducing waste and recycling as much as possible will reduce that cost dramatically and enable council funding to be put to better use.
It will also help the council meet challenging recycling targets set by the Scottish Government.
Councils are expected to achieve a 50% recycling target by the end of this year – Moray is currently sitting on 49% – with the next target of 60% to be achieved by 2020.
