FOR the third consecutive year St Jago Cathedral Preparatory School has won the primary level category of the Urban Development Commission’s (UDC) 2013 Hellshire Schools Environment Competition.

In a further coup to the other contenders, the Spanish Town-based school were also named second place winners at the seventh annual Hellshire Enviro fair at the Two Sisters Caves on Friday, May 31.

The feat, the supervising teacher for the school’s environment club, Nadia Guy, told the Jamaica Observer, took detailed planning and discussion with students and parents alike.

“Once again, we are extremely excited to be the winners! Three years in a row! We are elated,” Guy said on behalf of the institution.

“We have an environment club at school. So, before entering, we came together with our ideas, we came with our topics and the parents would also come with their ideas and give us help physically to make the stuff we submitted,” she said.

St Jago Cathedral entered two projects this year. One was based on creating renewable energy. The other was based on creating, reusing and recycling trashables.

“For one of the projects we created a water heater from wood. We also got an old air conditioner. We used some pipes connected to some non-return valves and igloos for the storage of the warm water and a piece of glass on top,” Guy explained.

“For the other project, we picked up old materials from just about anywhere and we used them to make things that can be used in homes, schools and just about anywhere. We have used materials from old refrigerators, old igloos and glass bottles to make lamps… We have [also] used banana trash to make mats. We used old crusty jars to make cannister sets. We have used old pieces of tiles to make key holders and cutting boards. We used old fans to make bird cages, and we used cables to make plant stands,” she added.

Spanish Town Primary were awarded third place.

Winners in the secondary school category were Waterford High School, which entered a suspended wall garden project featuring plants in cut plastic bottles in a hydroponics environment.

Second and third place went to Kingston Technical and St Jago high, respectively.

“We are elated. We have entered a number of competitions this year and we weren’t winning, [but] we had to start winning at some point,” George Clarke, head of department for science at Waterford High disclosed.

“We have planted lettuce, pak choi, sweet pepper, and callaloo. It is a project we want to improve on. We are thinking of how we can improve on it to sell it to the market,” said Clarke.

In the infant category, St Joseph’s Infant took the top

prize for growing food using recycled water.

Sixteen schools participated in the final round of the competition this year, which lasted from September 2012 to May 2013. Their projects focused on alternative energy, recycling plastics and styrofoam, cash crops, and container farming, and recycling for profit and farming.

The staging of the fair was held to commemorate International Day for Biological Diversity, which was observed on May 22. The theme for this year was ‘Water and Biodiversity’.