NUI MAYNOOTH: Blackrock College, Dublin's Transition Year students have covered an enormous range of subjects in their glossy environmental magazine, Greenwatch 2002 - from pandas to coral reefs, waste management to global warming.

Edited by Ronan Haughey, under the watchful eye of geography teacher James Campbell, this is the 14th annual issue of Greenwatch, itself a tribute to the enthusiasm of Campbell, as the college's first lay principal, Alan MacGinty, said at the launch last week.

At a time when many young people throw themselves into skateboarding or posing as nihilistic "Goths", it's good to see that some are prepared to turn their attention to environmental issues - even if the results are often patchy. Sellafield, for example, is described as a "nuclear power station" rather than a reprocessing plant for spent nuclear fuel.

But it is easy to be too critical; after all, the magazine was produced by a geography class of 15 and 16-year-old students. Overall, it does show a genuine awareness of environmental issues, even criticising the US government for reneging on the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

Tributes were paid at the launch to one of the Transition Year students, David Watchorn, who showed his own commitment to taking personal responsibility for the environment when he stuck his neck out two years ago over the college's plans to demolish its 1914 Jubilee Hall.

His initiative, reported by The Irish Times, led to an outcry from past pupils as a result of which the French Gothic-style building was spared.

Indeed, the college's principal told last week's launch that it would "still be standing vertical when all of us are horizontal".