Stu­dents from Tu­na­puna Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School have been named the re­gion­al cham­pi­ons of the 2025-2026 Young En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­en­tist Com­pe­ti­tion.

The school’s “Eco-Hero” team se­cured first place with a project fo­cused on re­duc­ing sin­gle-use plas­tics, beat­ing com­peti­tors from across the Caribbean.

Trinidad and To­ba­go was rep­re­sent­ed in the con­test by en­tries from Five Rivers Sec­ondary and St Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do.

Macmil­lan Ed­u­ca­tion Caribbean sales man­ag­er Deb­o­rah Brear­ley praised the team’s work and ap­proach to the project.

“Now I’ve had the plea­sure of see­ing your Eco­Heroes team win­ning en­try, and I have to say I’m ab­solute­ly blown away by it.”

She said the stu­dents com­bined cre­ativ­i­ty with prac­ti­cal ac­tion.

“Your project on re­duc­ing sin­gle-use plas­tics is such a bril­liant ex­am­ple of how small changes in every­day be­hav­iour can make a re­al­ly big dif­fer­ence.”

Brear­ley added that the project demon­strat­ed team­work and in­no­va­tion.

“You ap­proached the whole thing with ma­tu­ri­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty, and you’ve shown that en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tion doesn’t need to be com­pli­cat­ed, it just needs will­ing hearts and good ideas, and you should be in­cred­i­bly proud of your­selves.”

In the sec­ondary cat­e­go­ry, Five Rivers Sec­ondary School se­cured both sec­ond and third place.

Tu­na­puna Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School will al­so re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al prize of a hands-on sci­ence work­shop, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Ja­maican sci­ence ed­u­ca­tor and en­tre­pre­neur Kavelle Hyl­ton.