The issues of global warming and pollution all require complicated solutions; Queen’s College students are looking for answers by demonstrating collaborative thinking and learning the consequences of their actions on our precious planet Earth to bring about change.
The students have already shown considerable success in the Changemakers Competitions held by the forward thinking ‘Save The Med’ foundation.
In the last 4 years, 28 winning Queen’s students along with 2 teachers have now spent time at sea to witness for themselves the far reaching effects of plastic pollution and the impact on a diverse number of species.
These students have an incredible story to share with their community involving graceful sperm whales and large pods of agile dolphins.
Fresh really is best but not for the reasons you would think!
Over the last few years, Year 4 and 5 students have also investigated reducing single-use plastics including in their school merienda snacks. One solution was to swap individual portion-sized cartons of orange juice, which come with plastic straws, with juice decanted from larger family-sized cartons into small reusable bottles. Concerned about the nutritional value of the juice deteriorating, the Year 12 biology students were asked to investigate the levels of Vitamin C in different juices.
“Our results prove that fresh orange juice contains the most vitamin C as it requires the least volume of juice added to decolourise the DCPIP. The carton juice opened the day of the experiment and the carton juice opened five days previously surprisingly have nearly the exact concentration of vitamin C as they both have extremely similar mean volumes! So we don’t have to worry about the vitamin C content decreasing because we’ve proved that it doesn’t! Fresh juice however, in reusable bottles would reduce the amount of cartons by 100%.” Maria Y12
Year 12 biology students testing the different orange juices for their Vitamin C levels
The students were right to pose the question, ‘ Why don’t students just eat fresh oranges instead?’
During processing, carton orange juice is sterilised, which means heating it to high temperatures, totally destroying the vitamin C content; vitamin C is therefore added afterwards. Because there are many other healthy antioxidants and fibre in fresh juice - fresh is definitely best!