LIVINGSTON schoolboy, Callum Isted, has won the support of Holyrood's Citizen Participation and Petitions committee in providing schools reusable water bottles.
Seven-year-old Isted became the youngest person to ever present a petition to the Scottish parliament on Wednesday, making history in Holyrood.
Isted’s petition follows his own campaign to provide all the children in Dedridge Primary School in Livingstone with reusable water bottles, replacing the single-use plastic bottles they were given on Fridays.
READ MORE: Evidence on sustainable water bottles to be given to MSPs by youngest ever petitioner
To do this, Isted raised £1400 by completing the John Muir Way in stages and continued his efforts by having his petition signed with 146 signatures.
When MSPs asked Callum why he wrote to Parliament about this, Callum said: “I wanted to go to Nicola Sturgeon’s house to go and speak to her about the bottles but my mum told me that we weren’t allowed to do that so we looked online and found the petitions.”
When talking about why single-use plastics must be replaced, he said: “Because animals could get injured or die if they get littered or humans could get ill if they eat fish that has eaten plastic. It’s called microplastics.”
Holyrood researchers also found that tap water caused 180 times fewer greenhouse emissions than a standard single-use plastic bottle of water.
Isted is also due to meet First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later today.
Committee Convenor Jackson Carlaw said: “I hope you're going to do some straight talking and not let her flannel you, put you off, you make sure you get straight through it.”
Carlaw said the committee would bring the petition forward and write to the First Minister on the issue: “Callum, thank you very much. It’s been an absolute pleasure to have you in here. I hope you’re going to have a great day going forward. We’re going to take the petition forward and after you meet with the First Minister, we’ll be asking her to honour whatever commitments you can get and see what we can do to put your petition into practice.”
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