Young Euan is a Falkirk '˜green' hero

Euan Hendry (10) was awarded a Next Generation Hero award by Keep Scotland Beautiful for taking part in and setting up projects including adopting a town centre planter, a campaign discouraging people from dropping cigarette litter, and a ‘StrEAT Social’ digital campaign encouraging people to get involved in food growing.

Receiving the award at the planter on Falkirk’s High Street, Euan was delighted with the award and explained the projects he and his friends have been involved in.

He said: “We adopted this planter in October last year. The gardening club we set up is called the Blooming Bears.

“At the social club we try to make this planter look nicer because before we did this it was a bit of a wreck.”

Euan and his friends have put in a lot of their time to help improve the planter, bringing water bottles every night to water the plants.

Euan added: “Lately we have also been putting in wellie boots to make it look a lot nicer. We stop at people’s houses sometimes and they give us spare wellie boots so we can use them around the garden.

“We also did a Bin Your Butts campaign, because we didn’t want people to put their cigarette butts in the planters or along this street which happens a lot. “We did these projects because we wanted to make our town beautiful.”

Heather McLaughlin, Communities Project Officer with Keep Scotland Beautiful, presented the award to Euan, and applauded all their efforts.

She said: “It’s amazing what the kids are doing. We see so many young people doing great things, at that age in particular, and we find that the public really respond to what the kids do, especially when it’s homemade stuff like this, and when they are contributing to their local town and community.

“We have seen a much bigger engagement rate with cleanups and a lot of campaigns led by kids or contributed to by kids. It is really great to see more and more young people getting involved.

“As part of the eco schools getting their green flags, it means young people are out doing stuff, and we have seen a 12 per cent increase in school cleanups which is amazing.”