State Honoree

Charlotte Eisenberg, 13, of Peaks Island, Maine, an eighth-grader at King Middle School in Portland, helped create and now leads an environmental club at her school that encourages composting and "green" living. Involved in her community since she was a little girl, Charlotte has given tours at a Civil War history museum, collected hats and mittens for a family shelter, and worked as a phone canvasser for a presidential campaign. But it was while working last year on a school project with friends dealing with the harmful effects of styrofoam that Charlotte decided to focus her efforts on the environment. "We were outraged at the statistics we were finding," she said. "When I read things like styrofoam takes one million years to decompose or plastic water bottles are made with chemicals that cause cancer, it motivates me to take action."Realizing that more can be accomplished with more people, Charlotte and her friends formed the "Green Team." Their first project was to secure a grant to purchase compost bins for their school's classrooms. Now, students can put snack waste such as banana peels and apple cores into the bins, which are filled with worms. Charlotte and her club placed larger bins outside the cafeteria, and every day a club member empties cafeteria waste into them. The compost is then used to enrich the soil in the school's organic garden, which is weeded by club members. To promote other healthy environmental habits, Green Team members used recycled paper to make bookmarks and posters with facts about global warming, and made presentations to sixth-grade classrooms. The group is also working on a video to help classmates understand the importance of composting.