A GROUP of Worcestershire school children is waging war on rubbish.

Pupils at Sytchampton First School, near Ombersley, feel so strongly about recycling rubbish, they have written a letter to the Evening News, signed by more than 30 children.

The letter, written by eight-year-old Victoria Maybury, asks "Why doesn't our county recycle? I would hate to see Worcester turn into a rubbish dump.

"People go and dump all of their rubbish in the tip and if we just keep on doing this our county will become a tip."

Victoria, who lives in Barbourne, Worcester, wrote the letter after her class watched a CD-Rom highlighting the problems of landfill sites.

"Victoria came to me with the letter and asked me if I thought it was a good idea if everybody in the class signed it," said Iris Fox, a teacher at the school.

"I think she felt councils should be encouraging schools and households to recycle more. She did it off her own bat."

The 100-pupil school takes environmental issues very seriously and has even adopted a chimpanzee in Gambia, called Nelson, and an elephant in Kenya, called Emily-Kate.

It is currently working towards gold status in the ECO-school awards, run by the environmental charity Encams. It has already achieved bronze and silver status.

A committee of children has been set up, which holds meetings to talk about the things that need to be done to achieve the award.

Topics include energy-saving, transport, recycling, water, and improving their own school grounds.

"We're getting really into this," said Mrs Fox.

"It's always been part of our hidden agenda to increase awareness generally of environmental issues.

" The committee process is very empowering for the children. The committee members report back to their classes and action plans are made for improvements."

The school even has its own state-of the-art can-crusher, courtesy of Corus Steel.

"It's like a big one-armed bandit," said Mrs Fox.

"The children are desperate to be on my can-crushing list! We recently received £200 for our recycled cans and that money is being spent on a bird-feeding area and a vegetable patch."

The one thing the school does not have but would dearly like, is a paper-recycling bin, which is taken away by a company at regular intervals and the paper recycled.

Anyone who can help, should phone Mrs Fox on 01905 620418.