Hawaii Student Takes On Trash For Senior Project

Katherine Poythress/Civil Beat

It is traditional for high school seniors to leave behind a gift for the classes that will come after them.

As his personal gift to the Hawaii public school system, Castle High School senior David Miyamoto hopes to tally up the amount of trash put out by public schools — and then reduce it.

The 18-year-old from Kaneohe has drafted a Senate Concurrent Resolution asking the Hawaii Department of Education to determine how much waste is produced by the schools on average and to create a pilot program that would reduce that amount by 40 percent by the year 2025. The resolution is part of Miyamoto's senior project, which is focused on sustainability and reducing waste produced by Hawaii public schools.

Miyamoto testified last week at a public hearing on the resolution before the Senate Education Committee, chaired by his project mentor, Sen. Jill Tokuda. Tokuda gave Miyamoto pointers on how to write the resolution and helped him refine the language in it, he said.

Loading