ACS Student Won an European Debate Competition
Svetoslav Kostov, a 10th grader at ACS, won the European finale of PlasticsEurope’s Youth Parliament Debate, which took place in Rome on March 16.
The competition was organized by PlasticsEurope and Young Leaders GmbH. The topic of the debate was the pros and cons of plastics use in the context of conservation of energy and the environment. As written in the PlasticsEurope website, “The young winner was the best at providing a well-rounded speech on sustainability and the role of plastics in this regard, with strong rhetorics and robust arguments”. The competitors’ performance was assessed by a jury composed of politicians, experts, and journalists.
Svetoslav was the best among 50 students representing five European countries – Italy, Germany, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Turkey. To make it to the debate in Rome, the finalists were selected among more than 500 participants at the national rounds of the competition. Bulgaria was represented by 11 students, 4 were from the American College of Sofia. Congratulations for their excellent performance go not only to Svetoslav, but also to junior Margarita Todorova who ranked tenth, and to seniors Stefan Kourdov and Eltimir Alexandrov. As a whole, Bulgaria’s three students ranking among the best 10 in Europe is a great success.
In brief, here are Svetoslav’s arguments in favor of plastics use:
“The origin of the word plastic implies that this material is flexible. Plastics are flexible not only in their physical areas of application but also in the way they are applied. In other words, the problems that we see with plastics today are not negative sides of plastics, but results of our misuse of the material. Because humans have the freedom to use them properly, plastics are in fact the most benign resource for protecting the environment”.
You can read more about our students’ participation at the debate competition in Rome in the upcoming issue of the ACS Newsletter.