Students from a school in Dorchester are on a mission to reduce their use of plastics.

Pupils from Damers First School's Eco Club have been campaigning to reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles by asking businesses in Poundbury to sign up to the Refill Scheme. Businesses that sign up to the scheme agree to fill up people’s water bottles for free which encourages the use of reusable water bottles.

Recently Weymouth Sea Life Adventure Park invited the pupils for a complimentary visit as a special treat for all of the work that the children have done to promote awareness and campaign for change on single-use plastics. The club had the opportunity to meet the park’s new colony of 20 fairy penguins, which is the only colony in Europe, and were able to watch them being fed. Weymouth Sea Life also organised for a private host to show the pupils around the park, and tell them about how the centre is working hard to promote sustainability.

Edd Moore, eco coordinator at Damers First School, said: “We are extremely grateful for the team at Weymouth SEA LIFE who organised for us to have an amazing trip to the park. Our Eco Club learnt so much from the park’s experts about marine animals and conservation. The children particularly enjoyed visiting the fairy penguins and interacting with the creatures in the rockpool.

“This was a fantastic reward for all of our pupils’ hard work over the past year to achieve a plastic free status for our school and also helping the local community to reduce their use of plastic.”

Sarah Lambert, marketing manager at Weymouth Sea Life, added: “It was a pleasure to provide Damers First School’s Eco Club with a complimentary visit to the park. It is clear to see how passionate the pupils are about protecting the environment from further harm by promoting the need for the community to reduce its use of single-use plastics. This is an initiative which we support through our vision of the Sea Life Trust’s campaign for plastic-free oceans.

“You could see from the smiles on the children’s faces just how happy they were to meet our new Fairy Penguins in their state-of-the-art enclosure and we hope we have inspired them to continue campaigning for change.”

Visit visitsealife.com/weymouth for more information.