Students have been joined by their families for the latest climate change protest.

Signs reading ’We’re Drowning in Plastic’, ’Fossil Fuels are sooooo last millennium’ and hashtags ’#DownwiththeKids’ were displayed to the public outside Tynwald in Douglas during the school holidays.

The protest received support from Bill Dale, founder of Beach Buddies, with Environment Minister Geoffrey Boot speaking to the demonstrators along with other MHKs.

Leading the charge was 15-year-old Archibald Elliott, a Castle Rushen High School student from the Isle of Man Student Climate Network, which organises the protests.

’We’re hoping to tell the public how they can help the environment and what they can do to ensure that their carbon footprint is as low as possible, and also try to put pressure on the government to make quicker and more effective action plans for the climate change mitigation policies,’ he said.

’I read the climate mitigation policy and saw how little they were doing. I was speaking to the Environment Minister earlier and he was telling me how they recognised that it wasn’t doing enough a long time ago.

’So I asked him: "If you realised it wasn’t doing much a long time ago why didn’t you change it?".’

The student himself has dedicated his time to conserving the environment.

’I started beach cleaning for my Duke of Edinburgh volunteering and will continue this after. It’s crazy to see how much plastic is on the beach. I would definitely advocate for people to do beach cleaning.’

He added that he began a petition at his school to stop its canteen from using single-use plastic cutlery, which got 290 signatures and was sent to the head teacher.

The Pilkington family took part in the demonstration, with it being the third one Tommy, eight, and Charlotte, seven, have been involved in.

Tommy, from Rushen Primary school, said: ’It’s really important because I think that people like Geoffrey Boot and the adults should listen to us and try to help support us as much as they can. My thoughts are try to use less single-use plastic as you can so it’s more environmentally-friendly. You can get reusable bottles instead of just plastic ones.’

Mum Annalise said: ’I feel very proud and privileged that we can actually support the kids and that we’ve got two children who think about something bigger than themselves. It’s something that we talk about a lot at home. They started an eco-club in school and do regular meetings with Beach Buddies and they’ve actually changed the way we live our lives at home. We’ve reduced our single-use plastic. I love the fact that we can be here as a family.’

Find the public consultation for Climate Change Mitigation Strategy 2020-2030, which closes on May 17, here: https://consult.gov.im/environment-food-and-agriculture/climate-change-action-plan-2020-2030/