Kent school students will present their innovative solutions to the world’s plastic packaging crisis at an event hosted by the University on Friday 1 March.
The presentation by students from Sittingbourne’s Fulston Manor School will mark the culmination of a three-year European project, which reaches a conclusion at the University’s Darwin College.
The project, Bioplastics: The Future of Food Packaging?, has seen students designing, creating and marketing biodegradable alternatives to food packaging from scratch, collaborating in mixed international groups to raise awareness of – and find solutions to – the world’s plastics crisis.
The Fulston Manor School students have been working alongside European counterparts from Germany, Romania and Greece on an Erasmus+ project funded by the EU.
The event will be overseen by University scientist Dr Robert Barker, project co-ordinator Ursula Smidt, from the Augusta Bender Schule, Germany, and Daniel Steadman, of Fauna & Flora International, who played a major role in convincing governments to introduce legislation banning micro-plastics in household products.
It represents the latest project involving the School of Physical Sciences outreach team working with schools to demonstrate the ways they can work together to tackle the problem of plastics.
Dr Barker said: ‘We are working with schools to show how students can be offered opportunities to find durable, sustainable and economically viable alternatives to plastic packaging. I’m excited to see what innovative solutions these students have come up with.’