President's Environmental Youth Award (PEYA) 2022 Winners

2022 Winners

Read the press release about this year's winners. Congratulations!

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EPA Region 1:

Reducing Air Pollution and Conserving Water in Community Gardens
By: Rahul Ram
Award Category: Grade Level K-5
Massachusetts

While volunteering at his local community garden in Westford, Massachusetts, Rahul, a 5th grader at Day Elementary School, noticed that growing food requires a lot of resources. As his parents drove him to and from the garden, he wondered about the air pollution produced by their vehicle and all the other cars driving to and from the garden each day. Through his investigation, Rahul estimated that all the vehicles driving to the garden to care for individual garden plots burned significantly more gasoline than a single farmer’s tractor would tending to the same size plot of land. Rahul set out to reduce air pollution in his community by encouraging fellow gardeners to embrace sustainability through watering several other plots when they drove to water their own. To facilitate this effort, he created a website where gardeners could volunteer to water each other’s plots. Recognizing that the project would need community support to be successful, Rahul shared this website with fellow gardeners through flyers as well as informative signs at the garden. Rahul’s garden community has already reduced about 2500 pounds of air pollution, and he hopes they will reduce even more next season.

Rahul also observed that maintaining a garden requires a lot of water. He “crunched the numbers” and estimated his garden uses 66 swimming pools of water each May through October season. Rahul learned about hydroponics, which reduces water loss by growing plants with nutrient-rich water rather than soil. He proposed including a hydroponics section of the community garden to educate the community about its water conservation benefits and encourage greater adoption of hydroponics in the local garden. With the help of his teachers, Rahul has also shared his knowledge with kids at his school to encourage other students to be environmental problem-solvers in their communities.

Portsmouth AgInnovation Farm
By: Portsmouth Middle School
Team Members: Olivia Almilli, Anabella Barber, Tatum Brennan, Dahlia Brilhante, Aurelius Brockman, Cameron Davis, Elizabeth Lantz, Elle McFadden, Stella McInerney, Maggie Mullen, Raelin Nary, Brooke O'Brien, Hannah Pilotte, Olivia Purdy, Fiona Sarro, Noah Sidewand,  Owen Sidewand and Rowan Willet.
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Rhode Island

Several years ago, Farmer Martin Beck gifted 6 acres of land to Portsmouth Middle School and the Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District. Students at Portsmouth Middle School have been working on project-based learning activities to steward the land ever since, now called the Portsmouth Agriculture Innovation Farm. In 2020, a teacher at Portsmouth Middle School gave students the opportunity to decide how the land might be used. The teacher taught a virtual after school class in which 25 students researched soil health, water quality, regenerative farming, irrigation, and working with small animals and used this knowledge to create a vision for their farm.

During the summer of 2020, students initiated a small garden at the farm to learn more about working with the land. Families joined in to help dig, plant, and water the garden. The local community donated used hoses and garden supplies. In the spring 2021, more than 65 students joined the original group to create a school garden and a community garden at the farm. That summer, students harvested produce and donated it to two local food banks. By the spring 2022 season, everything the students had originally envisioned will be up and running thanks to various grants and fundraisers, including a multipurpose room, a shade pavilion, a high tunnel, a tractor, a tractor shed, an irrigation system, deer fencing, and a pollinator walking path.

Future plans to help further the farm’s projects will include creating a board of stakeholders, writing a strategic plan, acquiring goats and chickens to use for the 4-H programs, and working with engineering high school students to plan a solar-powered rain catchment system to irrigate the high tunnel. In the summer of 2022, the school will begin piloting a summer camp where students will learn writing and Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) concepts through the farm. Additionally, several local non-profit organizations have come forward to help facilitate more opportunities for project-based learning at the farm.

Portsmouth Agriculture Innovation Farm continues to bring excitement to students and families and engage the broader community in environmental stewardship. Through the farm, students are developing robust environmental problem-solving skills while gaining the rich experience of bringing a shared vision to life through imagination, dedication, and collaboration.

EPA Region 2:

Sunrise Bergen County
By: Leaders of Sunrise Bergen
Team Members: Eesha Bhatia, Julianne Chase, Anika Dhulipala, Pranav Hooda, Elena Jacoby, Andrea Kim, Kaleigh Krause, Sasha Lee, Kaylee Nam, Samiya Pathak, Pooja Rayapaneni, Jisae Son, Eva Taveras, and Meghana Veldhuis
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
New Jersey

A team of high school students in Bergen County, New Jersey, concerned about the impacts of climate change on their communities, wanted to give fellow students the opportunities to take local action. They founded Sunrise Bergen County, now led by 14 high schoolers in grades 10-12, who foster this completely student-run initiative to help the environment and improve environmental education in area schools.

Sunrise Bergen County advances environmental stewardship through both education and direct action. For example, participants organized an Earth Week 2021 Climate Summit that featured knowledgeable environmental leaders in the community and benefited students across Bergen County. Members also organized the first annual Climate Summit at a local school, hosting 40 speakers who discussed science, activism, urban planning, renewable energy, and other environmental stewardship topics. The group also engaged younger children at events hosted at parks and libraries, where they used age-appropriate storytelling and arts and crafts as environmental education teaching tools. Members also organized climate art galleries at local parks, featuring local artists who helped raise awareness about climate impacts. Additionally, Sunrise Bergen County has organized local park and river cleanups including a March Madness cleanup contest facilitated through social media.

Using a variety of teams with different focus areas, Sunrise Bergen County provides opportunities for student members to leverage their strengths and interests to help the environment through action planning, creativity, community-building, and more. The group also uses tools such as social media and virtual meetings to broaden its reach even during the pandemic. The current leaders of Sunrise Bergen County will transfer leadership upon graduation to younger high schoolers, leaving a legacy of environmental stewardship and providing other students with an opportunity to gain experience, knowledge, and leadership skills.

EPA Region 3:

#PlasticfreePWC
By: Stephanie Ruiz Molina and Ashley Munoz-Trujillo
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Virginia

In February 2021, a survey of two high schools in Woodbridge, Virginia, showed that an overwhelming number of students used three or more plastic beverage bottles a day, most of which were water bottles. When 12th graders Stephanie and Ashley saw those numbers, they were shocked; they realized that even if every student used just one water bottle a day at Freedom High School, more than 10,000 water bottles would be used in a single week.

Working with George Mason University and local county partners, Stephanie and Ashley participated in trainings to learn more about the impacts of plastics on aquatic ecosystems. They learned that plastic bottles do not completely decompose, but rather break down and leave behind harmful microplastics. They also realized that water bottle litter on their campus could drain directly into a local creek that ultimately flows into the Potomac River.

Stephanie and Ashley set out to encourage their peers to use more reusable bottles instead of plastic ones. The student body identified several barriers to why students did not use reusable water bottles and set-out to devise a strategy to address them. For example, they successfully petitioned their school to install water bottle stations for students who did not like the taste of water from the faucet. They also collected more than 300 student action pledges, partnering with local organizations to provide one donated reusable bottle to each student who pledged. To address a lack of understanding about the importance of reducing plastic waste among the student body, Stephanie and Ashley started a social media campaign to reach their peers. Stephanie also shared her voice as a student representative on the Prince William County Schools Superintendent’s Advisory Council on Sustainability.

Stephanie and Ashley not only raised awareness about the impacts of plastic pollution in their school, but they also addressed the barriers their peers had to using reusable bottle. Their environmental stewardship helped fellow students contribute to protecting inland and marine ecosystems.

EPA Region 4:

Pollinate Our Planet
By: Lauren Huffstetler
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Tennessee

Lauren, a 12th grader at Maryville High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, is passionate about pollinators. She knows that without pollinators of all kinds, from bees to birds to bats, we would not have reliable food systems or vibrant ecosystems. Given the magnitude of threats pollinators face from habitat loss, planting a pollinator garden in her own yard did not feel like enough; she wanted to get more people involved.

Lauren has collaborated with individuals and organizations across her community to create pollinator habitat. She started a Girl Scout Gold Award project, Pollinate Our Planet, and was awarded the Joyce Maienschein Leadership Grant. She used the money from this grant to purchase seeds and distribute more than 700 seed packets to community members. To get pollinator gardens started in public spaces, she challenged local organizations to start their own pollinator gardens and offered to provide the seeds and resources needed to get started. Four local organizations and four schools have accepted her challenge so far. She also collaborated with students at Maryville College to get a pollinator garden started on the campus and partnering with the Maryville College Student Government Association to get her seeds thrown to audience members during the Homecoming parade. She also handed out seeds at the local farmer’s market with her fellow Girl Scouts. She is currently working with the Blount County Master Gardeners to get a pollinator garden started at the Blount County Public Library, where she will be designing the garden and securing grants to fund the project.

Realizing the need to restore pollinator habitat extends beyond her own community, Lauren launched a website, PollinateOurPlanet.com, where she shares resources from across the United States, and an Instagram account, @PollinateOurPlanet. She sees education as crucial to protecting pollinators, particularly because people are afraid of some, such as bats, and inclined to squish others, such as ants. She created coloring pages, a brochure, and infographics designed to combat fear and stigma surrounding these creatures, which she shares on her website and Instagram account. Lauren hopes that if people have a better understanding of the important roles these pollinators play, they will become more tolerant and willing to coexist.

She hopes to continue contributing to her community projects and take her pollinator challenge nationwide. She plans to apply for additional environmental grants to purchase wildflower seeds that are native to each region of the United States and distribute them through her website. Lauren is also eager to hold more in-person educational events and workshops.

Lauren’s favorite part of her project is when she receives emails and photos from people who have used her wildflower seeds to start their own pollinator gardens. She has learned that people are willing to do their part as environmental stewards if they have the tools to do so.

EPA Region 5:

The Monarch Butterfly Project
By: Hilton Elementary School Students
Team Members: Eliza Chen, Eloise Chen, Emmeline Chen, Mary Rose Geiser, and Michael Geiser
Award Category: Grade Level K-5
Ohio

Mary (1st grader), Michael (3rd grader), and Emmeline (3rd grader) of Brecksville, Ohio signed up as a team to compete in the Philadelphia Zoo UNLESS Contest, where students chose one of five animals as the focus of a wildlife conservation project. Eliza (5th grader) and Eloise (Kindergartener) were honorary helpful members of the team. The team chose the monarch butterfly because they migrate through Northeast Ohio. The five students decided to help save the monarch butterfly by inspiring their friends, family, and community to remove threats and preserve habitat to help the monarch in its migration through the Cuyahoga Valley and Northeast Ohio.

The team learned as much as they could about the monarch butterfly: its migration, its essential role as a pollinator, the threats it faces, and potential solutions. Then, the team developed and delivered eight presentations to more than 50 of their fellow students, as well as friends and family, about the importance of taking action to save the monarchs. As part of these presentations, the team provided seeds, materials, and instruction for audiences to build their own monarch habitat. Other activities undertaken by members of the team included working with local organizations to build a community pollinator garden, submitting art to national and international contests in 2021, and participating in the Cleveland Metroparks Monarch Watch Tagging Program.

Eager to inspire broader action, the team also undertook a letter writing campaign to encourage local mayors to sign the National Wildlife Federation Monarch Pledge, which would dedicate their cities to building monarch habitat and other actions to help the monarch. The team also reached out to local gardening clubs. With the help and support of the gardening clubs, the mayors of Broadview Heights and Brecksville are two out of the 12 local Ohio mayors to sign the pledge in 2021. These cities have committed to taking 15 actions to help the monarch butterflies, including a community awareness campaign.

Confront the Climate Crisis
By: Ethan Bledsoe and Annabel Prokopy
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Indiana

As 9th graders in West Lafayette Junior and Senior High School in 2019, Annabel and Ethan learned about the climate change urgency from other youth voices around the world. Curious about their own community’s role in climate change, they learned that Indiana had the eighth-highest per capita emissions among U.S. states and was home to the largest number of polluting coal plants of any state in the nation. Annabel and Ethan kickstarted the nonprofit organization Confront the Climate Crisis to further STEM-focused climate literacy and provide opportunities for youth to be involved in addressing climate change through the political process.

Confront the Climate Crisis has successfully supported a variety of climate legislation in Indiana. For example, they advocated for the successful City of West Lafayette climate resolution urging the city to set a carbon neutrality date of 2038, supported a climate emergency declaration passed by the City of West Lafayette in February of 2021, and worked to create a youth city councilor position for the City of West Lafayette in November of 2021. Student leaders have worked with various community members, including the Tippecanoe County Climate Alliance, students and professors at Purdue University, and city officials. Confront the Climate Crisis launched a statewide petition calling for climate action in Indiana which has received tens of thousands of signatures so far. In 2021, they worked closely with a state senator to draft two pieces of climate legislation which were filed in the Indiana state legislature in January 2022: Senate Bill 255 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 3. The student-led coalition hopes that, if passed, this legislation will combat climate change by creating a diverse climate task force that will be required to develop a climate action plan for the state.

The organization also champions environmental literacy, grounded in STEM, in high schools and beyond. For example, the team successfully persuaded their high school’s administration to implement an Advanced Placement Environmental Science course. To spread climate literacy in the community, they secured grant funding to construct seven Little Free Libraries and stock them with STEM-focused climate resources. Additionally, they organized a vertical garden program in collaboration with the local library to educate younger students about climate change and food insecurity.

Confront the Climate Crisis has left a tangible impact through accessible climate literacy programs and local legislation as well as through lasting connections established with students, community members, and government officials across the state of Indiana.

EPA Region 6:

Pollinator Preservation
By: Spencer Jackson Burke
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Texas

Several years ago, Spencer, now a 12th grader at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas, Texas, watched a Dr. Who “Stolen Earth” episode on the “bee-apocalypse,” in which bees are aliens that leave Earth. The episode piqued his interest in bees and sent his life on a trajectory involving thousands of volunteer hours. He read everything he could about bees and discovered that one in four solitary bees face extinction, a scary prospect given that they constitute nearly 90 percent of the world’s bee population. To combat these alarming statistics and protect wildlife in his local area, Spencer led several complex, multi-year conservation projects involving over 100 volunteers during his time as a high schooler. His efforts earned him the prestigious Boy Scouts of America William T. Hornaday Silver Medal.

After obtaining permission from the City of Dallas, Spencer led service project workdays to build 100 solitary bee nesting boxes to encourage pollination. Over two years, more than 25 volunteers dedicated 652 hours to build and install these wooden nesting boxes and place them at locations all over the metroplex. Additionally, Spencer worked on a project at a five-acre park in the middle of Dallas to help combat invasive species that threaten native bees and increase pollinator habitat. To do this, he surveyed the land, determined what invasive plants needed to be removed, and identified native grasses to plant. Then, his team of 30 volunteers worked for 300 hours to help remove 45 contractor bags of invasive grasses and plant native grasses and wildflowers.

Spenser also undertook several other projects aimed at conservation goals in his local area. At Northaven Trail, Spencer volunteered for the City of Dallas as a Trail Captain (the only youth selected to serve in this capacity) for a one-mile section of the trail. He has walked the trail almost daily for three years and led projects to remove garbage and disperse wildflower seed balls along the trail. Over the years, the Northaven Trail projects he spearheaded involved 125 volunteers who worked nearly 500 total hours. Spencer also worked with a Texas Master Naturalist from the Connemara Conservancy to brood, hatch, raise, band, and release over 300 Northern Bobwhite Quail and collaborated with urban biologists at the City of Plano to release bobwhite quail at Oak Point Nature Preserve.

Spencer’s conservation efforts have inspired community members from across the Dallas metroplex to take on environmental stewardship activities. He discovered that when he involves others in conservation work, it creates a ripple effect; they have a sense of purpose, achievement, and gratitude towards the project and, in turn, seek to involve still others in the important cause of environmental conservation.

EPA Region 7:

Promoting LED Light Bulbs through a Public Service Announcement
By: Klaertje Kiyora Hesselink
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Iowa

Klaertje, a 12th grader at Cedar Falls High School in Cedar Falls, Iowa, has always been interested in digital media. In January 2021, she enrolled in a 21st Century Literacy class where she learned how to create effective public service announcements (PSAs). When the class was over, she decided to use what she had learned to help reduce energy consumption in her community. Most of the energy used in Klaertje’s community is produced by burning coal, which emits carbon dioxide and contributes to poor air quality. She set out to develop a PSA encouraging people to make the easy and inexpensive switch from incandescent or fluorescent lightbulbs to LEDs, which require much less energy.

Klaertje first conducted research to identify a target audience and select the most effective format for her PSA. She met with a volunteer at LED Brighter Communities, scheduled meetings with local TV broadcasters and radio station representatives and spoke with her local utility company. She learned that the older homes in her community were less likely to have made the switch to LEDs. Consequently, she decided to focus her message on older generations and determined that local radio stations were one of the best outlets for reaching this audience.

Armed with the information, Klaertje developed a script and created a voice recording using her phone. She did hundreds of takes and experimented with different approaches before landing on the final recording, a happy and motivational forty-five-second “Convert to LED and Save” radio segment that has been periodically playing for the last six months between news stories and music on 93.5 The Mix radio. The PSA has reached thousands of listeners in her community and has helped inspire a group of students to begin plans for a community-wide LED conversion program that will significantly reduce its carbon footprint.

Klaertje’s project taught her about the role of effective digital communication in fostering environmental stewardship, inspired people in her community to switch to LED bulbs and prompted a new generation of students at her high school to promote LEDs in the interest of working towards a more livable planet.

EPA Region 9:

Operation Leadership Hawai'i
By: Punahou School
Team Members: Kaelah Kimura, Joey Misailidis, and Katie Rudolf
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Hawai'i

People living in Hawai'i have experienced the repercussions of a multitude of environmental issues first-hand, from erosion to rising ocean temperatures to marine debris. In 2018, Punahou School students Joey, Kaelah, and Katie (now in 11th grade) founded Operation Leadership Hawai'i (OL) to equip youth with an understanding of these issues and the tools to combat them. OL is a completely youth-run and grant-supported organization focused on improving access to environmental leadership education for Hawai'i students.

OL creates and delivers educational programming focused on environmental issues facing Hawai'i, particularly climate change. Over several years, the organization has developed a curriculum with the support of educators and environmental experts, conducted pilot workshops, recruited, trained volunteers, and engaged the community. OL student leaders reach out to and coordinate with parents, students, trained volunteers, and school administration to implement their programming. To date, OL has trained more than 20 volunteers and taught over 140 students through after-school programs. OL’s programs foster environmental stewardship by providing students with the opportunity to enact real-world change through hands-on learning that emphasizes design thinking, environmental problem solving, and STEM skills. Their programs encourage students to explore numerous ways an environmental problem can be solved and aim to forge personal connections between youth and the environmental problems Hawai'i faces. Citing data from pre- and post-program surveys, OL reports improved leadership skills and critical thinking skills among program participants as well as a deeper understanding of environmental issues and potential solutions.

OL is currently working to start chapters at more schools across Hawai'i. They collaborate with several partner organizations, including the Blue Planet Foundation, Hawai'i Youth Climate Coalition, and Kōkua Hawai'i Foundation, which have helped expand community impact. To ensure the program’s legacy of growth and youth leadership following Kaelah’s, Joey’s, and Katie’s respective high school graduations, the organization is training a team of volunteers to take over the executive positions after 2023. OL plans to continue its work raising young leaders to fight environmental injustices and preserve their Earth for generations to come.

Honorable Mentions

Region 3:

Conscious Consumers
By: Karina Chan-van der Helm
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
Pennsylvania

Karina, a 10th grader at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is concerned about packaging waste and its negative impacts on the environment. Her Conscious Consumers project was inspired by the Energy Star label on her refrigerator and the nutrition labels on her food, which she knows help consumers purchase more energy-efficient appliances and make healthier food choices. She wondered if something similar could help consumers quickly and easily understand how environmentally friendly (or unfriendly) a product’s packaging is. She decided to create a system that would condense data about the environmental impacts of product packaging and transform it into a rating system consumers could understand and use to make more informed purchasing decisions.

Karina took a course at school that allowed her to design an independent project with oversight from mentors. She created an algorithm that assigns product packaging a rating between one and five stars, with five being the most environmentally friendly. The algorithm’s inputs are the total weight of a product, the weight of a product’s packaging, and the materials the packaging is made of. To develop the algorithm, she weighed various products with and without their packaging to determine the percent of the total product accounted for by packaging. She also collected data about packaging materials from various sources, including EPA, and assigned them weights based on the manufacturing and disposal. Karina’s ultimate goal is a government mandate that requires all packages to display a rating that allows consumers to easily determine their environmental impact and be better environmental stewards in their purchasing decisions.

After learning from industry players that this ambitious project would require support from the government and from trade associations to implement, Karina has begun reaching out to governments and companies that have committed to sustainability goals to gather support for her idea. Karina hopes this five-star rating system will provide transparency in the packaging industry, with positive benefits for climate change, ocean litter, and recycling systems.

Region 9:

An Incentivized Self-Sustaining Food Waste Rescue Initiative
By: Nithin Parthasarathy
Award Category: Grade Level 6-12
California

As a 12th grader at Northwood High School in Irvine, California, Nithin was troubled by how much food is wasted as millions of Americans go hungry every day and how wasted food breaks down in landfills into the greenhouse gas methane. Growing up, Nithin’s parents and grandparents instilled in him gratitude for every meal and taught him to be conscious of food waste. One day, while eating at a bagel shop, Nithin observed that unsold bagels were discarded daily after store closure. Not wanting good food to go to waste, especially during widespread economic hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic, Nithin set out to find a way to distribute these bagels to people in need.

He contacted local stores to bring awareness to food insecurity and successfully persuaded several stores to donate unsold food. Through his organization, Zero Waste Initiative, Nithin led seven student volunteers and part-time adult volunteers to recover 25,000 pounds of unsold food in the last year with a total value of $185,000. This food would have otherwise gone to waste and produced the equivalent of nearly 200,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions. This food was donated to various organizations that serve abused women and children, veterans, seniors, high risk patients, college students, and families struggling with food insecurity.

Zero Waste Initiative continues to grow its volunteer base and impact. They were able to raise funds to make volunteering more accessible by providing pre-paid gas cards for volunteers to use during their shifts. Nithin also hopes to engage Uber and Lyft services for when volunteer resources are constrained on specific days due to prior commitments. Additionally, Nithin envisions leveraging technological solutions to build the next phase of the organization; for example, he is working towards building an app to seamlessly accommodate new donors, recipients, and volunteers.

Nithin gained entrepreneurial skills through his work as well as a deeper appreciation of how food is taken for granted by those in relatively privileged positions. His fondest memory from the project is watching a group of kids eagerly walking back from school to enjoy the donuts he was dropping off at the Orange County Rescue Mission. Nithin is humbled by thank you letters he receives from the agencies, the non-profit he donates to and is encouraged by the family and friends who have reached out to support the cause, truly exemplifying a community spirit of stewardship.