Young people from Willows Care Farm near Malmesbury fronted a message to politicians at COP26 in a film aimed at highlighting the need to use recycled materials in the fight against climate change.

Moths to a Flame featured recorded pleas urging world leaders to take the issue seriously.

Organised by non-profit Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust the campaign meant creating two large moths from recycled bottles to represent people’s relationship with energy and the health of our planet. The young people of Wiltshire managed to recycle 200 plastic milk bottles.

The care farm played an important role getting them involved in the project. They held forest and eco-therapy sessions, recorded messages for politicians talking about why they need to take COP 26 seriously and learned how to use willow for their creations from a local artist who specialises in it.

Julian Barlow, chairman of the WWCE, said: “The climate emergency is a real cause for concern for young people across the county, so we wanted to do something positive around COP26 which students could really engage with. The project sparked some fantastic conversations around the environment and what we can do to reduce our carbon footprint which was incredibly encouraging to hear.”

“Community energy groups like ours are enabling local people to kick start their own renewable energy projects which are essential to responding to the climate crisis. Seeing hundreds of milk bottle moths and their willow counterparts sitting atop our solar arrays at Braydon was a striking symbol of some of the positive action we at the WWCE are taking to reduce carbon and slow the rate of climate change on our doorstep.”