Mrs Caroline Beer
Managing Director
Branch 
On the 3rd August 2018 Caroline Evans and Gregory Shaw attended the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists – Regional Final, held at Rhodes University Grahamstown. The exposition is for learners between the ages of 13-18 to have a chance to show others their projects about their own scientific investigations. By participating, students increase their awareness of the wonders of science, add to their knowledge and broaden their scientific horizons. EOH Coastal & Environmental Services sponsor a prize each year for the best Environmental Management Project.
Twenty projects were adjudicated with criteria including: relevance to the environmental management field; presentation and design of the project; scientific methods; ability to answer questions; and innovation in the environmental management field. The projects ranged from illegal fly tipping and how it could be dealt with in rural areas to water filtration. Water filtration was the most popular project and understandable given the current situation in the Eastern Cape regarding water shortage and access to good quality drinking water. Learners in the Eastern Cape and especially the rural areas have limited access to resources. They are forced to be imaginative and resourceful when it comes to equipment and materials. This was clearly evident in the majority of the projects where learners had repurposed waste products to house their experiments. Of particular interest and the winner of the EOH Coastal & Environmental Services prize was the method of purification by distillation. The learner had fashioned two receptacles out of 500ml Coca Cola bottles. They had glued the two lids together and inserted clear tubing on the inside of the bottles. The learner left the apparatus in the sun for 5 hours. The result was 300ml of pure water from 400ml of “impure” water. The use of waste materials, the design of the apparatus, the enthusiasm for science and their ambition to really make a difference in their community was inspiring.”
