School trio win national engineering competition

The money won by the team will be used for STEM experiences for students from their school

Three budding inventors from a school in Devon have won an award for showing how seaweed could be used as an alternative to plastic.

Colyton Grammar School students Delilah, Maisie, and Lucy received the Spirit of Engineering award.

It is the main prize in the Royal Academy of Engineering's national Sustainable Futures Innovation Challenge.

It was awarded for their reusable, edible container made from seaweed.

Delilah, Maisie and Lucy gathered their seaweed from local sustainable sources and experimented with different types of seaweed and varying methods to produce a range of products with differing flexibility - called Composta Wrap.

The award recognised the team's presentation and film, which demonstrated their process.

The Colyton Grammar team also had to give a presentation to judges and an audience of guests at the Royal Academy of Engineering's headquarters in London.

The team fought off competition from more than 130 schools across the UK to make it to the final

The judging panel was made up of leaders from Shell, Amazon, the Royal Air Force and senior academics.

Experts at the Royal Academy of Engineering are due to look into how the team's winning idea might be put into production.

The award came with a prize of £2,500. Colyton Grammar School said the money will be used to work with local universities to provide STEM experience days for Year 8 students.

Delilah said as the final was treated as a day out instead of a big competition it made it "a lot less stressful".

Delilah, Maisie and Lucy gathered their seaweed from local sustainable sources

She said: "I also really enjoyed the build up to the event, experimenting with how to create our plastics as it was an amazing experience to work on a project for so long."

Teammate Maisie said the team hoped their product would end up in supermarkets. She said in order to achieve this, she and her team needed to develop the product further and expand its shelf life before releasing it to smaller scale businesses.

Tim Harris, head teacher at Colyton Grammar School, said the winning of the main prize stood testament to the team's "brilliance", as well as the dedication and commitment of the school's science department staff.