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One day, when tucking into his weekly Friday packed lunch, 7-year-old Callum realised that all the plastic bottles in children’s’ packed lunches got thrown away. Callum felt this was wasteful and he wanted to investigate the problem further. He read that many plastics, such as plastic bottles, eventually end up in the sea, harming sea-animals and humans who eat the fish too!
Callum used his favourite subject, maths, to work out how many plastic bottles were being thrown away each year at his school. He worked out that since there were 180 students receiving school packed lunches each Friday and children attend school for 40 weeks a year, more than 7,000 plastic bottles were being thrown away each year. And that was just at Callum’s school. He couldn’t even imagine how many plastic bottles were being thrown away as a result of packed lunches at schools throughout the country or even the world!
Armed with this knowledge, Callum decided to do something about the problem. He spoke to his mum and asked if he could go to Nicola Sturgeon’s (the Scottish First Minister) house but his mum said it was not allowed. So together they looked online to work out what else they could do to make a change. Callum decided to start a petition to ask parliament to buy re-usable metal bottles for all schoolchildren in Scotland.
But Callum did not want to just sit and wait for his petition to collect signatures, he felt something needed to be done sooner. Callum set himself the challenge of walking 134 miles in stages to raise money so that his primary school could buy metal bottles for all children. Callum’s fundraising efforts were a huge success and he raised a magnificent £1,400 for his primary school to get bottles. In fact, he raised so much that they were able to fix their broken water taps and buy bottles for some adults too!
By then, Callum’s petition and fundraising efforts had made so much noise, that Callum’s initial dream of meeting Nicola Sturgeon came true! Callum was invited to meet Nicola Sturgeon to discuss his idea and the Scottish Government is now reviewing his petition to see what they can do to help.
Callum spotted a problem, researched what he could do to help and went above and beyond to do that. Even though initially he wasn’t able to meet Nicola Sturgeon, he continued to persevere and eventually his hard work paid off. When asked what it would feel like to know that he had provided re-usable water bottles to all primary school children in Scotland, Callum said – ‘It would feel like I won a World Cup in football’.
