 | Garrett Rappazzo, fifteen, of Castleton, New York, says he got the idea of organizing a massive tree planting campaign at his school from his father, who did the same thing forty years earlier. "For as long as I can remember," Garrett says, "my family and I have always planted trees together." Mobilizing fellow students and the local business community, Garrett recently planted fifty white pine seedlings at his school, assuring a greener future for his children, too. |
Teen Profiles
As we say in the book, if you're feeling at all intimidated, thinking that you're just one person who might not be able to do much, reading profiles of teens going green can help kick start your motivation. See if any of these fellow Generation Green comrades make you think, Hey, that sounds like something I might want to try! For more profiles, go to chapter eight of Generation Green. And, come back soon to see further examples of teens around the world who are stepping up and speaking out!
 | When nine-year-old Savannah Walters of Florida heard about how driving on under-inflated tires in our country "squanders four million gallons of gas every day," she was determined to do something and adopted a catchy phrase, "Pump 'em Up." Now fifteen years old, Savannah goes door-to-door in her neighborhood with ninety-nine-cent tire gauges, and her volunteers have given away over ten thousand free tire gauges and shown thousands of adults how to get better fuel economy by putting the right amount of air in their tires. Savannah has also built a website (www.pumpemup.org), lobbyied Washington, spread her campaign nationwide to ten states, and been featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and as a CNN Hero. |
 | 14 year-old Alec Loorz is the founder of Kids-vs-Global-Warming, a youth-inspired and youth-led organization that informs, trains, and empowers kids about the issues of global warming to inspire action. He gives multi-media presentations to schools and conferences, and starts Action Teams to empower the next generation of green leaders. After giving his own youth-focused presentation over 30 times, Alec was invited by Al Gore to be trained to give the official Inconvenient Truth presentations. He is currently the youngest trained presenter. In June, Alec and his team installed an environmental activist project called SLAP (Sea Level Awareness Project), showing how far underwater the city will be if nothing is done about climate change. |
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13-year-old Nathan Moss found inspiration via the Step-It-Up Conference in Salt Lake City, and the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Nathan started an innovative project, "The Anti-Idling Campaign," to help stop global warming and improve the air quality in his community. He and 18 other schoolmates started by holding up signs before and after school, telling parents and bus drivers to turn off their engines while they waited. The campaign has shifted people's habits. Nathan also took his campaign to the Utah state legislature and lobbied for a bill to prohibit buses from idling, and to make school districts adopt a policy regarding bus idling.
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 | 19-year-old Jessie-Ruth Corkins was challenged by her ninth-grade teacher to become more energy efficient. Jessie and her friend came up with the idea to use wood-chip furnaces to provide heat instead of traditional pollutant oil burning furnaces. One thing led to another, and Jessie soon found a greener idea: Prairie Grass, which can be made into pellets and burned! This idea helps struggling farmers because prairie grass isn't a food crop, therefore it won't raise prices or cause shortages--"A win-win for the farmers." In 2007, Jessie-Ruth founded the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative (VSHI) to promote the new fuel. She's currently using grant money to install pellet stoves in the homes of fifteen low-income families in Bristol and Montpelier, Vermont.
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