Case of the Dirty Dishes
It's lunchtime at Thomasville High School in North Carolina, and most students are thinking about the food piling up on their trays. Not Brian Styers, a 16- year-old honors student. He is thinking about the trays themselves -- and the nondegradable plastic used to make them. Bothered by the fact that school- issued Styrofoam trays, plates and cups were choking the local landfill, Styers and a dozen or so like-minded students began marching through the cafeteria earlier this year carrying reusable dishes brought from home. They were branded "tree huggers" and "crazy," but Styers and his...