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Are you concerned about the growing environmental crises? Do you experience anxiety when thinking about climate change and its impact on our planet? The 2025 Trust for Sustainable Living (TSL) International Student Competition offers a unique platform to turn eco-anxiety feelings into positive action and empowerment. With the theme From Eco-Anxiety to Eco Action & Empowerment, this competition invites young individuals worldwide to creatively express their thoughts on this crucial issue.
Opportunity Details
This year, in celebration of their 15th year of International Student Competitions, TSL is excited to launch their next competition inviting students to share their original, creative and expressive responses to the theme, From Eco-Anxiety to Eco Action & Empowerment
Eco-anxiety, climate grief and climate anxiety are defined as ‘negative emotional responses generated due to the threat of environmental and climate crisis’. A 2024 United Nations report has highlighted that ‘Eco-anxiety’ is an ‘emergency crisis hidden in plain sight’ and is likely to create a massive impact among the world’s children and youth.
Recent global surveys have indicated that over 50% of young people are experiencing eco-anxiety and are extremely worried about environmental and climate change, with many reporting feelings of sadness, anxiousness, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt.
Responses to the climate and ecological crisis such as anxiety and anger are natural and healthy emotional responses, and many believe these feelings can be channelled and can help encourage engagement, understanding and action at an individual and group level, as demonstrated by the rise in youth engagement and action seen over the last few years.
TSL wants to help young people develop a sense of agency, empowerment and hope for solutions and action by creating a safe and supportive space and outlet for expression for students and teachers to explore moving from feelings of eco-anxiety, to eco action & empowerment.
They are open to accepting any form of student response, you can choose to create a piece of artwork, music, video, poem, essay, letter, story, etc. There are no restrictions on the type of work submitted, they want students to be as open and creative as possible in interpreting the theme, however, it must meet the submission criteria detailed here.
The overall Grand Prize Winner will receive a trophy and a cash prize of £1000 plus £500 for their school, with one Runner Up receiving a trophy and a cash prize of £500 plus £250 for their school (cash prizes paid in local currency). All participating Teacher Champions, Finalists, Honourable Mentions and International Debate participants, will receive personalised e-certificates.
Students are invited to submit one competition entry exploring the theme of “From Eco-Anxiety to Eco Action & Empowerment”
They are open to accepting any form of student response; you can choose to create a piece of artwork, music, a video, poem, essay, letter, story etc etc. There are no restrictions on the type of work submitted, they want students to be as open and creative in interpreting the theme as possible, however it must meet the submission criteria detailed below.
Accepted file formats: DOC, DOCX, PDF, JPG, PNG, MP3 or MP4
Maximum file size: 400MB (for any file type)
Word limit: Written entries should be a maximum 600 words (not including the bibliography and 250 word maximum self reflection)
Duration limit: Video or audio pieces should be a maximum of 3 minutes long
To help them ensure an anonymised judging process, please ensure that the student’s name and school name are not included in the uploaded files, these should only be included where specified on the entry form.
All entries should include 250 word (maximum) self-reflection on the project by the students. This is an open reflection but could include, for example, what they have learnt by participating, any skills they have developed, what their ‘take away’ from the project is, what they have enjoyed or found challenging, or any actions they have been inspired to take as a result of taking part.
If the entry is a non-written piece, it needs to be accompanied by a short explanation of the piece (maximum 200 words) as well as the self reflection. This can be uploaded as a separate document.
Teachers will be able to register on the TSL Submittable page from the 4th October.
Judging Criteria
The judges look for originality and creativity in all formats – and the potential to contribute to constructive national or international debate. Unique perspectives score highly.
Our judges will be scoring entries on:
All work should be original and the student’s own. A bibliography of references should be included where appropriate and will not be counted as part of the official word limit. Entries with plagiarised content will not be considered for an award.
If students choose to use AI to support them in their research, then it is important they do not use AI tools to generate a final entry and submit it as if it was their own work. The use of generative AI must be acknowledged in the bibliography (as detailed below) where it has been used as a functional tool to assist in the process of creating entries.
Minimum requirement to include in bibliography:
For example: I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT 3.5 (Open AI, https://chat.openai.com) to summarise my initial notes and to proofread my final draft.
Click on the link to the application website to apply.
As a reminder:
Accepted file formats: DOC, DOCX, PDF, JPG, PNG, MP3 or MP4
Maximum file size: 400MB (for any file type)
Word limit: Written entries should be a maximum 600 words (not including the bibliography and 250 word maximum self reflection)
Duration limit: Video or audio pieces should be a maximum of 3 minutes long
To help us ensure an anonymised judging process, please ensure that the student’s name and school name are not included in the uploaded files, these should only be included where specified on the entry form.
All entries should include 250 word (maximum) self-reflection on the project by the students. This is an open reflection but could include, for example, what they have learnt by participating, any skills they have developed, what their ‘take away’ from the project is, what they have enjoyed or found challenging, or any actions they have been inspired to take as a result of taking part.
If the entry is a non-written piece, it needs to be accompanied by a short explanation of the piece (maximum 200 words) as well as the self reflection. This can be uploaded as a separate document.