AN INTERNATIONAL student is helping fund sustainable initiatives at his school by cashing in on the fruits of his labour.

Head of the school’s sustainability team, 18-year-old International Baccalaureate student Filip Bigos has pioneered an apple juice manufacturing business that has turned nearly 500kg of abandoned fallen fruit into at least �100 of revenue, which has been put towards funding other sustainability initiatives at Felsted.

The teenager explains: “We collected the apples that had fallen from trees around the school grounds and also put out a request to students and parents for any spare apples from trees at home. Piles of them came flooding in - perhaps because we offered a free bottle of juice to anyone who contributed.”

The sustainability team then located an apple press and set about squeezing the juice and bottling it in recycled glass bottles with their own Felsted label.

The juice has been marketed and sold around the school, and supplied to the village shop and delicatessen.

“It has been a fairly long process but the rewards have made it all worthwhile,” added Filip. “Not only have we made a healthy product out of fruit that would have been allowed to perish, we have made some money too.”

Sustainability is high on the agenda at Felsted and the proceeds of this initiative will go towards funding many other projects designed to promote awareness of the environment, including a ‘switch-off’ scheme with labels on all computers and lights in the classroom blocks and boarding houses, and a ‘swishing’ event for parents and students to swap their unwanted clothes.

More ideas are welcomed and the sustainability team has sent out a questionnaire to all students asking for suggestions as to how the school can further improve its credentials.

“So far we’ve received over a hundred replies, pointing to key areas that students would like us to focus on,” says Filip.

“This is the first time we’ve carried out a survey of this kind and we’re hoping that it will truly reflect the needs of the School in terms of sustainability and that we will be able to pay for any initiatives we decide to go ahead with using money raised by the sale of the apple juice.”

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