OUR MISSION

Youth Sustainability Leaders is a student-led organization whose primary mission is to educate and help our communities understand the importance of sustainability and protecting our environment. We educate and work with our townships, schools, libraries and local businesses to take action in promoting sustainability strategies and to help inform and educate about new community guidelines through community events and projects.

We are fortunate to live in a township whose formal sustainability program has enacted effective policies regarding waste management, energy and agriculture.

Our township recently implemented a ban on the retail use of single-use plastic bags. To help the community understand the necessity for this plastic bag ban, we devised a plastic recycling challenge. The goal of our plastic challenge is to remind and teach everyone about the current plastic pollution crisis, one that is crippling ecosystems and economies that rely on healthy marine environments. Teaching our community about a circular economy and how plastic waste can be recycled into a usable product is an important lesson. Many neighbors shopping at local stores hosting our collection bins have been surprised to see that their recycling efforts can be transformed into a reusable product. From the thousands of pounds we have collected, we have witnessed how this simple recycling lesson has motivated our community to keep recycling more.