Three California students pushed their school district to go greener. Their campaign of 600 students led to electric bus grants, recycling bins and food donations

Most teenagers have little say over how their school district spends money or manages its waste. But three California students decided that climate policies should not be left entirely to adults. Hayden Crocker, Savannah Levack and Trisha Vasanadu founded Go Greenish, a youth-led movement that took students from classroom conversations to discussions with school officials and eventually helped trigger tangible changes across their district.

It started with questions about their own schools

Crocker's interest began when he was a high-school freshman serving as a junior commissioner on Solana Beach's Climate Action Commission. After seeing climate measures discussed at the city level, he began investigating what his own school was doing, including its solar power and organic waste practices. That curiosity grew into Go Greenish, which Crocker co-founded with Levack and Vasanadu. Instead of limiting their efforts to awareness campaigns, the teenagers wanted students involved in actual policy discussions. “It is vital that districts include us [students] in climate conversations,” Crocker later said, arguing that young people will inherit the consequences of decisions being made today.

Their campaign produced changes at school

The students raised issues including transportation, food waste, recycling and waste management with school officials. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, their advocacy was followed by the district applying for grants for electric school buses, putting recycling bins in classrooms and establishing a system to send excess cafeteria food to homeless shelters in San Diego. Go Greenish also raised $8,700 and mobilised more than 150 volunteers at the time of its 2024 President's Environmental Youth Award, while financing and organising a community garden. The three students received the EPA's President's Environmental Youth Award (PEYA) for their work.

The teenage project didn't stop there

Go Greenish has continued expanding. Its current impact figures say the organisation has involved more than 600 student volunteers, completed 37 school-site projects and reached partners representing 1,827 K-12 schools across 11 states. The organisation says its programmes now include waste reduction, community gardens and air-quality monitoring. Its partner network also gives students resources to push districts towards formal climate action plans.

Why schools can make a difference

Their focus on schools has scientific relevance beyond the classroom. The US EPA says transportation, electricity use, food and waste all contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions, meaning changes in how institutions travel, consume energy and handle waste can form part of broader emissions-reduction efforts. The teenagers' achievement is therefore not simply about convincing classmates to recycle. They demonstrated that students can enter conversations normally dominated by administrators and turn environmental concerns into changes involving buses, food and school infrastructure. Go Greenish began with teenagers asking what their schools were doing about climate change. A few years later, their bigger achievement may be proving that students don't have to wait until adulthood to influence the answer.