EPA Regional Director Recognizes Pasadena Polytechnic School Student For Her “Incredible” Climate Change Initiative

Pasadena 8th grader Audrey Ma has been awarded the President’s Environmental Youth Award by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, for her submission about Polytechnic School’s food waste sorting and composting project.

EPA Regional Director Martha Guzman said Ma was selected because of the “incredible” climate change initiative she has done, which has made an impact beyond her school.

Polytechnic’s Manager of Environmental Sustainability, Laura Fleming, pointed to Ma’s achievement.

“During the 2021-2022 school year, Audrey and the Middle School Sustainability Club were able to expand the food waste sorting initiative to the elementary school and an Upper School Sustainability Club expanded it in grades 9 – 12, Fleming said. “To achieve K-12 waste sorting in one year and to then compost much of that food waste on-site was quite a feat.”

Together with other students, Ma created the food waste sorting pilot project through Polytechnic School’s Sustainability Club, which she founded, after learning that rotting food waste in a landfill creates methane, a greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide.

Ma’s climate change initiatives began in 2020 after a lightning strike caused a Bobcat Fire near her house in Arcadia. 

“I was frightened at the prospect of losing my home and of not knowing what tomorrow would bring. Luckily we were spared from the worst, but many families in the surrounding areas were not as fortunate” Ma told Pasadena Now. “Afterwards, I had this intense desire to find out why mega fires were becoming more and more common.”

After learning that drier climates, which likely result from climate change, make it easier for wildfires to spread, her journey in fighting climate change started. 

Ma said it ‘took a village’ for the Sustainability Club to begin making a real change and teachers and students supported implementing its program. 

“I am immensely proud of how we were able to come together as an entire student body to tackle our school’s food waste problem. From the little kindergarteners to high school seniors, it was truly a collective effort,” Ma said.

In the future, the Sustainability Club is planning to create an edible food recovery program in collaboration with a local nonprofit called Mano a Mano. 

The program aims to bring the school’s surplus food to Mano a Mano, which in turn will distribute it to local families in need. 

“I think what I see in the future is using the program we have here at Poly as a blueprint for other schools, because only by expanding this can we make meaningful reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,” Ma said.

Ma believes her generation has a very important role to play in the battle against climate change, saying they are the “last generation that has an opportunity to fix climate change before its effects become permanent and irreversible.”

“A bunch of kids decided to turn discarded food into compost rather than methane gas – because we want to choose our own tomorrow and not have climate change choose for us,” Ma said.

To date, Ma’s Sustainability Club has successfully diverted more than 16,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill each year—that translates to 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide or 375 pounds of methane.

“There’s no question that Audrey is a force. She is passionate about climate action and takes extraordinary initiative,” Laura Fleming from Pasadena Polytechnic said.

Fleming said the award honors the work of not just Ma but all the the entire Middle School Sustainability Club as well as the work of the Poly Class of 2024 who as 8th graders researched composting and were granted approval to build on-site composting bins, that helped pave the way to make the initiative a success. 

“As I reflect on these projects, of course it’s terrific that they have reduced the school’s carbon emissions. What heartens me the most though is that our students are beginning to understand the power they have as youth and they are learning the skills required to effect change. It doesn’t get better than that,” said Fleming.

Each year, PEYA honors a variety of local projects developed by students, school classes, summer camp attendees and youth organizations to promote engagement in environmental stewardship and protection.

From across the country, 13 educators and 41 students are recognized for their leadership and commitment to environmental education and environmental stewardship. This year, 34 students who worked as a team or individually on 15 projects received the PEYA; eight students received honorable mentions. 

Their stewardship projects, conducted in 2022, display a commitment to advancing community garden efforts, protecting pollinators, reducing pollution, and conserving water and energy, reducing food waste, and combating climate change.