The Phillips 66 Waterline 2024 Sustainability Challenge

Phillips 66 and Future Humber are proud to launch this year’s challenge, aimed at engaging students in the UKs sustainability and journey to Net Zero. 

The project supports education to meet Gatsby Benchmarks 2, 4 and 5, and supports learning across Physics, Geography and STEM based subjects. The project can be run as a standalone off-curriculum day, or as up to 6 lessons as part of curriculum learning. The challenge can also add value to CVs for apprenticeships or on university applications. It helps demonstrate personal and academic skills and qualities such as:

STEM - Creativity - Teamwork - Critical thinking - Communication - Problem Solving

Open to students in Year 9 /10 (KS 3 and 4) and 6th form/college (KS 5) working in teams of up to five. Students are tasked with developing an idea to help improve our communities, region, country and/or planet. All schools expressing an interest will receive a challenge pack with the information needed to succeed in this competition.

Requirements for Students:

How students develop their project is entirely up to them. They could build a model, design posters, make a video, short film, or advert to explain their idea. Conduct a survey to show why it is needed or research existing solutions.

Students need to keep a record of their drawings, ideas, and any other evidence they create to support their project presentation, if they are chosen as one of the finalists to present to their peers and the judges at the regional Waterline Summit.

You will receive a challenge pack at the start of the new term, that will contain the challenge overview and the introduction video giving full details of the 2024 Challenge.

It is up to the individual schools how they wish to choose their teams in Phase 1 - Team Selection. Maybe a school competition, or through an out of school club, suggestions are in the challenge pack, along with the deadlines. Phase 1 will result in each school nominating a team of up to five students to represent them at Phase 2. Schools can nominate a second team from their 6th form. 

Phase 2 – The teams should now build their idea further, performing detailed research and analysis, comparing, and contrasting the positives and negatives, ready to send to the judges. The schools nominated team will then forward their idea digitally, maybe a presentation, a video, advert, or vlog? From here the judges will chose the finalists for the Waterline Summit student expo.

Final - To be held at the Waterline Summit 2024 in November, where the finalists will be invited to present their ideas as a stand at the student expo for judging, here they are encouraged to build prototypes, models anything to help communicate their ideas. The final 3 will be asked to present on the stage.

Prizes - There are fantastic prizes for grabs including £5,000, a trip to London to visit Parliament and Phillips 66 head office, as well as some great runners up prizes.