Teens Takeover was the theme for the December Circular Economy Futures Meetup event in Brisbane. It was a great event celebrating our engaging young people taking action to shape a more sustainable future for ourselves and our planet.
Hosted by Yasmin Grigaliunas of The World’s Biggest Garage Sale at River City Labs in Fortitude Valley, the event showcased some genuinely inspiring youth speakers and personalities.
The End is a group of five Year 10 students from NSW who recently won the Foundation for Young Australians Unleashed Award for a board game focussing on climate change and supporting students to make more informed choices in the hope of avoiding the end of our beautiful planet.
Noah Pronk, 13 was given a challenge at school to start a business with $20. After learning that surfboard wax released toxic chemicals into our oceans, Noah created Sticky Pronk out of natural ingredients. With an eye-catching design for his brand Noah already has sales on the board!
Rachel Crane, 15 is the founder of Recycle Case with a goal to turn plastic pollution into phone cases using a shredder, extruder and a 3D printer. Whilst still in the prototype phase of development Rachel has incredible passion and vision to bring this product to market.
As the finale, we were given the opportunity to meet Arlian Ecker aka ‘Plastic Free Boy’ who at 13 is making strides in Australia and overseas to raise awareness of the problems of plastic pollution through an educational (and fun) film Plastic Alarm. Arlian is currently making another film called “Plan B” – Message of Hope to continue educating about the true impact of plastic to our planet.
Nicole Dyson, Founder of Future Anything emceed the panels and presentations. Future Anything is to be applauded for the amazing high school program that supports and guides young people such as these to take real and critical actions; engaging the minds of our children and youth to work on some of our biggest challenges in caring for our planet and learn critical business skills in the process.
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