We thought up the idea of Eco Eaters, a youth-led organization to help restaurants reduce their single use plastics and replace them with recyclable and compostable options.
During my sophomore year of high school, I started the Earth Warriors Environmental Club with my friend, Summer. For our initial project, as we brainstormed projects to work on, we kept coming across one prominent issue of single-use plastics in the restaurants in our town. We live in a small ski town that has a multitude of tourists that visit each year, so the restaurants are a large part of the town. We thought up the idea of Eco Eaters, a youth-led organization to help restaurants reduce their single use plastics and replace them with recyclable and compostable options. This group soon expanded outside of school. We have been successful in converting a Thai restaurant in our town from styrofoam take-out boxes to a compostable cardboard box and talked with almost every other restaurant in town to get them on track to do the same. Some of these restaurants already use alternatives to single-use plastic or have told us they would be open to the idea of using options.
The Eco Eaters are what have pushed me into all of the other environmental initiatives I have held and become involved with. I am excited for the future of Eco Eaters and enthusiastic about helping more restaurants!