A Derby cosmetics store has received a donation of 11,000 plastic bottle tops from environmentally-friendly pupils at 
Foremarke Hall, Repton’s prep school.
The activity links with teacher Gemma Smith’s Year 4 group’s Geography topic “Our Environment” while at the same time supporting a campaign by highly-respected handmade cosmetics company Lush.
Lush is running a campaign around plastic bottle tops, which cannot be recycled with most local authorities. This means they end up in landfill and can be washed to sea, adding to beach litter and damaging wildlife.
The company is accepting clean plastic tops at its shops nationwide from where it is taking them to Poole where they will be stored before they are recycled and incorporated into new items.
Miss Smith said: “Our work on the environment involves looking at sustainability and recycling. As part of this I wanted to get my form involved in something real from which our environment would benefit. The Lush campaign is perfect for this.”
“The pupils have engaged with it really well – we have collected five large buckets full of plastic tops! This campaign has helped them understand landfill, plastic production and its use of energy and dangers to wildlife from discarded plastic.”
Commenting on the work the pupils have done and the efforts made to collect the bottle tops, Lush Derby Sales Assistant Angel Attenborough notes: “It was fantastic to see what one school could do and how much plastic they have saved from going to landfill. One child had even collected over 3000 bottle tops herself and the school’s efforts have been incredible.”