An 18-year-old student from Ireland has been named as the European winner of a global environmental sustainability competition.
Arya Satheesh, from Letterkenny, Co Donegal, is one of seven regional winners in The Earth Prize 2026, a global competition for students between the ages of 13 and 19.
Arya's project, Eco Purge, is a biodegradable plastic that also removes existing microplastics in the environment.
She has already collaborated with researchers at University College Dublin and ATU Letterkenny, as well as BiOrbic Bioeconomy Research Centre, to develop a working prototype.
With $12,500 of prize funding from The Earth Prize, she now plans to scale the solution for real-world use in products like packaging and compost bags, making it easier to tackle microplastic pollution on a larger scale.
"Plastic pollution doesn't just disappear, it breaks into tiny pieces that stay in our environment. I wanted to create something that could help tackle that problem directly," she said.
"Eco Purge is designed to both replace plastic and help remove existing microplastics, and this is just the beginning , and I hope it can become a scalable solution that makes a real difference."
The Earth Prize is run by The Earth Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland, founded during the School Strike for Climate in 2019.
The global winner of the competition will be crowned later this month.
