Letran students win global championship for EcoCycle Sustainability Model
By MBrand
A group of STEM senior high school students from Colegio de San Juan de Letran - Manila won the top award at the JEL ISABC & EduPro Green Talent Awards 2025 held at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, earning the title Champion of the World for their sustainability project EcoCycle.
The team Lander composed of Adrian Amaya, Kylie-Nicole Daigdigan, Tasya Arabela Palon, and Elijah Leigh Tan of STEM 12A developed EcoCycle, a youth-led initiative that implements a closed-loop circular economy system. The model operates through a continuous cycle of selling, collecting, recycling, creating, and selling again, enabling the school community to convert paper waste into new, affordable school supplies. The process is illustrated through a five-step flow that integrates waste collection and product creation into a single system
According to them, EcoCycle aims to address environmental, economic, and social needs by reducing school waste, offering budget-friendly eco-products, and engaging students as sustainability advocates. It positions itself as a mini circular economy hub, capable of recycling at least 500 kilograms of paper waste yearly equivalent to saving approximately eight trees and replacing more than 1,000 single-use plastics through reusable alternatives such as tumblers, bamboo pens, and cloth eco-bags.
The project also targets student participation, intending to engage 70 percent of the school population in recycling activities and reinvesting 20 percent of all earnings into the EcoCycle Fund to support future cycles of the initiative .
EcoCycle’s advocacy, “Buy Green. Give Back. Start the Cycle,” encapsulates its mission of promoting practical sustainability practices that can be adopted in other schools and youth communities nationwide.