Seaquam students took home six of 17 national awards in the 2017 Young Reporters for the Environment competition.
The competition asked youth ages 11 to 18 to seek out solutions to environmental issues in their community and present their findings as either a video, photo or article.
A winner was chosen for each of the different media in two age categories: 11- to 14-years-old and 15- to 18-years-old.
Abhayjeet Sachal first heard about the competition from students who had done it last year, and invited his classmate Faith Carswell to participate.
“He was like, ‘You could take a great photo, and we could work out an idea, and I could do a write up,’” Carswell said. “It was a very relaxed ‘let’s try this out.’”
At the time, they didn’t know so many other Seaquam students had entered the competition.
“I knew some of the students through the environmental club, but I wasn’t exactly sure who was participating,” Sachal said.
“The whole community at Seauqam revolving around sustainable lifestyle is very active right now,” Carswell said.
“So that definitely played a role in it,” Sachal added.
Winning first place in video for ages 11 to 14 were Wayne Zhang, Daniel Ruttan and Andrew Cui for their depiction of the long-lasting effects of plastic pollution, and how people could find simple solutions to it.
Sachal and Carswell won first place in the age 15 to 18 category for their interpretive image.
Second place for photography in the 15 to 18 age range went to Pranav Agnihotri, Dryden Wiebe and Sarvan Gill. Their photo talked about the captialist culture behind plastic pollution, and showed a businessman sitting in a bathtub full of packing peanuts, holding an empty pop bottle.
Emily Gauthier, Taitum Olfert and Sierra Lamontagne won third place in the age 11 to 14 category for their film on how plastics can affect Burns Bog.
Third place for photography in the 15 to 18 age range went to Muhammad Huzaifa Wahla, Mushin Khan and Muhammad Umer Gundhra. Their photo used the idea of rose-coloured glasses to show how humans fail to notice pollution in nature.
Samriddhi Singh won third place in the 11 to 14 age range for her article “Environmentally Inclined.”
Winners from the national competition were automatically entered into the international Young Reporters for the Environment competition. None of the Seaquam students won the international prize.