South East Cornwall school children who were the first to call for the usual Comic Relief plastic Red Noses to be replaced with a more environmentally friendly alternative have taken part in a special press conference with leading lights of the fundraising campaign and TV celebrities.
On Tuesday, the children from Fourlanesend Community School in Torpoint, who wrote to Comic Relief to rethink its use of plastic back in 2019, were able to quiz the charity’s co-founder, Richard Curtis – together with charity chief executive Ruth Davison, broadcaster Liz Bonnin and TV presenter and Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba – about the new 100% plastic-free, plant-based Red Noses.
The exclusive press conference coincided with the official announcement that Comic Relief and its longstanding partner, the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, have created the new-generation Red Noses from bagasse, a highly-sustainable by-product of sugarcane. The two organisations said that they had been researching environmentally-friendly alternatives to plastic for the charity appeal emblem for some time but that the appeal from the Fourlanesend pupils had led to them stepping up a gear with these efforts. Even so, the new noses took 18 months to develop, they said.
To thank the school children for being environmental champions and for encouraging the charity to work faster on finding a new material for the Nose, Comic Relief invited them to be one of the very first in the country to see, feel and try on the new Nose, and get all their questions answered.
The questions the children asked the charity leading lights and celebrities ranged from the design, where they are made, how you recycle them and their favourite character.
Nine-year-old Fourlanesend pupil Lauren said: “We were very excited and happy to be take part in the conference. We’re such a small school, but despite that, we’ve been able to do something that is going to make a really big difference to the world we live in.”
Rebecca Norton, Head Teacher at Fourlanesend Community Primary School, said: “The email pinged into my inbox and there it was, Comic Relief actually asking the school if we could support them in their plastic-free Nose announcement. I was amazed, I just couldn’t believe they’d taken it on, that they’d made plastic-free Noses! The children are so delighted to know that they’ve been listened to, and that they’ve played a role and were a driving force in this change.”