2019, Greeley Central High School, Greeley, Colorado, USA
Eliana Mascarenas
Bottle caps are one of the top 5 types of trash found on beaches. Furthermore, in beach cleanup activities around the world from the past 30 years, over 20 million caps have been found. The Poudre watershed is connected to the Mississippi, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Everything we deposit in our rivers, even the tiniest piece of plastic, impacts the bigger picture. As her solution, Eliana educated the public about how much they are contributing to the issue. She put together a bottle cap drive within several schools and collected over 200 lbs. of plastic bottles. Those bottle caps were then delivered to a recycling center and were traded for a bench made out of plastic bottle caps.
