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Meet The 'Recycling Queen:' Young People Working Toward A More Sustainable Future For Utah

Ashley Rohde
Paige Morgan at the Utah State University Recycling Center

The Utah Society for Environmental Education honored five young people from around the state this week for their outstanding work on environmental and social causes.  

"My name is Paige Morgan and apparently I’m the recycling queen,” she said.

Morgan was the Recycle and Waste Intern for the Student Sustainability Office at Utah State University for two years, during which time she expanded two waste reduction programs at the University. She described those programs as we toured the recycling center

“Recycle-mania is a nation-wide competition that happens in February or March," she said. "The recycle awareness week was the event that I did to increase recycling during that time or just educational events that will tell students, like, recycle better especially during this time so we can win!...  Yeah, and then there’s True Blue Reuse, which sets out donation bins for students when they’re moving out, so they have an option instead of throwing something away, they set their stuff in another location that will be reused.”

When the donations were collected, Paige got to work organizing the donated items. She then sold them back to other students. 

“We went from $300 to $1600 and then all of that money got sent down to a community garden down in Peru," she said. "That $1600 paid for all the supplies for that community garden and a translator and just teacher to teach the community how to do community gardens.”

The other students selected for this honor worked on a wide variety of environmental education topics including protections for endangered species, climate education for marginalized groups, and social changes to promote green behaviors in Utah communities.