A schoolboy from Llansantffraid is hoping to raise £2,000 to help fund a trip to an eco trip to Greece next year.

Luke Steel, 13, attends Oswestry's Marches school and held a garden sale at his house in the village on Saturday to reach his first milestone of £500 to help fund the trip to the Archelon Sea Turtle Protection.

The teenager will be part of a group of 30 who will take part in beach clean ups to ensure new hatchlings are not entangled in plastic, where they will also try to raise awareness of the current crisis.

He says watching the Blue Planet II series with Sir David Attenborough sharpened his love for marine biology and sparked his interest in reducing plastic.

"I want to make a difference," he said.

"I'm interested in it – watching Blue Planet with Attenborough and his campaign about plastic, and also the video of the whale where they cut its stomach open and found so much plastic.

"Hopefully the school will be doing dome fundraising soon. My group – there's five of us – have been given permission to set up a stall at an event in school where people can 'sponge their teacher'."

The 'yard sale', held outside the family home, was organised by Luke's mum Helen, who admitted she has been blown away by the support from people in the village.

She said: "Everybody in the village have been really helpful.

"We can't thank them enough and so many people have donated. We want to thank people from the Sun Hotel and the football club, who have donated monies and raffle prizes for us.

"We've had ladies bake cakes for us to raffle and sell and I would like to thank Jamie Ashton from the Costcutter who has donated so much.

"Luke has raised between £300-500 already. We're still going to do a lot more in the village as well."