We are members of Girl Scout Cadette Troop #1405, and are currently working on our silver award project. The Girl Scout Silver Award is an award for girl scouts in the cadette level to complete to make an impact on their community. It helps girls to improve social skills and build confidence (by contacting community members for help), learn about current issues in their communities (as the project is built to help improve their communities), and help them to prove themselves as organized, responsible, and determined young adults in the world. For our project, we’re trying to bring the environmental effect of Girl Scout Cookie packaging to the GS Foundation’s attention. We believe that producing more plastic for cookie packaging is against what the Girl Scouts stand for, and therefore should be changed. 

    In early 2020, Girl Scouts switched some of their cookie packaging from cardboard to plastic boxes. The plastic wrappers on the outside of the new boxes, unlike the plastic wrapping protecting the cookies directly, are unrecyclable. Not to mention that the inside wrapping is labeled with the recycling number “6”, which isn’t available to be recycled in most districts. The change, though it is thought of by the Girl Scout Foundation as reducing the amount of material used, is hurting the environment because of its plastic makeup.

    We have a couple alternatives in mind, one of them being to revert back to the old cardboard packaging for all the cookies. In our opinion, the price of the cookies, even if it has to be raised because of the cardboard packaging, is irrelevant compared to the environmental impact of plastic production. As members of the generation growing up right now, we have done the least impact on the environment through climate change but our futures are faced with the greatest burden.

It would mean a lot if you could help our project continue to go forward by adding your name to our petition. Thank you!