CHILDREN from a special education school have collected and transformed thousands of plastic bottle tops into stunning art murals, as part of a nationwide recycling campaign to raise awareness about the dangerous impact of plastic waste on the environment.

The Westhaven School in Weston-super-Mare has been named among the top ten finalist schools in the Message in a Bottle Top art competition, for its ‘Semicircle the Seagull sculpture created using chicken wire and modroc for the structure of the body and plastic bottle tops to bring it to life.

The children, aged 7-11, chose a seagull because there are so many at school and are often found ‘being cheeky’ and pinching chips from the canteen.

Westhaven will now enter into an online exhibition alongside nine other finalists, where friends and family can support and comment on their favourite submissions before the winning school and two runners-up are announced on July 18 2022.

The winning school will receive a playground makeover worth £5,000 and the runners-up will be presented with tablets worth over £100.

Sarah Vincent, a teacher at Westhaven, said: “Our children all loved taking part in the project. It brought the community together, collecting the bottle tops, and really promoted a sense of teamwork, cooperation and collaboration.

“The children had the opportunity to express their creativity and literacy skills in terms of helping to write the poem for the video performance.”

Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News:

The Message in a Bottle Top campaign, led by sustainable composite decking brand Composite Prime in collaboration with the National Schools Partnership, is now in its second year and has been built in line with the national curriculum, providing more than 1,300 teachers and approximately 173,460 pupils aged 5 to 12 years with learning resources across art, maths science and citizenship.

Overall, 1,239 schools from across the UK have taken part in Composite Prime’s Message in a Bottle Top campaign, which has seen almost 500,000 bottle tops recycled into beautiful art sculptures of endangered wildlife.

Educational resources have been accessed by schools across the country almost 5,000 times and competition entries have increased by 93 per cent in 2022.

Composite Prime director, Charles Taylor, added: “We’re absolutely delighted with the level of interest in our Message in a Bottle campaign, which has grown exponentially in year two.

"The standard of entries has been incredible and it’s been so difficult to select a top ten.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to know that thousands of pupils across the country have engaged with the educational resources we’ve created to raise awareness about such a serious and consequential issue.

“We’ve absolutely loved reviewing all the stunning entries and every school that entered should be so proud of their hard work and dedication to the project.

“We’re very excited to award the winning school with their well-deserved playground makeover later in the year. Good luck Westhaven.”

Composite Prime creates eco-friendly and socially responsible decking and cladding products, made using recycled plastic and FSC certified oak wood flour.

The company is dedicated to producing sustainable materials. Each square metre of composite decking contains the equivalent of more than 3,000 plastic bottle caps or 280 plastic bottles.

In its seven years of operation, the brand has saved the equivalent of 176 million plastic milk bottles from landfill and over 1.8 billion bottle top caps.

To find out more about Composite Prime’s Message in a Bottle Top recycling programme and see the full list of finalists and show support for your favourite, visit www.composite-prime.com.