Case study: Pupils Profit (High Streets for All)

Pupils Profit is an organisation that works to inspire children and young adults to believe in their potential as future business people by empowering them with the skills and tools needed to make positive change within ethical enterprises. The ECO Refill project engages schools to create fully circular child led refill shops; the school based shops allow the wider school community to routinely refill household items as part of their routine and enables children to actively contribute to tackling the global environmental challenge of plastic waste.

Pupils Profit continues to work with local authorities across London to expand the reach of the ECO Refill Shops, increasing environmental awareness and providing practical measures to tackle single use plastic waste in their communities.

I started Pupils Profit about a decade ago. We’d been working with schools setting up healthy ‘tuck shops’ as enterprise projects, and shortly before lockdown I realised that the model could be adapted into an eco refill shop to reduce needless plastic waste. Receiving the Designing London’s Recovery seed funding allowed the idea to be piloted in London schools, and to use design and systems thinking to establish best practice. Data from the pilot led to further funding being awarded by three London councils in order to introduce refill shops into a further 14 London schools, as well as a charitable grant to support the activity in four coastal schools.

Elizabeth Gimblet, Pupils Profit Founder