Five students at Phillips Middle School in Chapel Hill have won a $15,000 first place award in the national Lexus Eco Challenge.
Together, the kids tackled the problem of too much trash from the school being shipped to a landfill more than 100 miles away; so they decided to start a school composting program. They call themselves Trash Terminators 2.0.
One Terminator said, “We set up composting bins in our school cafeteria, in which students and staff dump all their compostable food items, which include food waste, food trays and napkins.”
Not only was it a sound practice for the environment, it was a learning experience for the students at Phillips.
This past week, Trash Terminators 2.0 were one of eight first-place award winners in the Lexus Eco Challenge, an educational program that gives young people the incentive to learn about the environment, and come up with ideas to improve it.
According to a press release from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, the Terminators plan to use the $15,000 prize money to replace toilets at Phillips Middle School with ones that use water-saving technology.