Hello my name is Abigail Espiritu, I am a student from North Houston Early College High School in Houston ISD. I am the president of the Climate Activism Club, and one of our main concerns at the moment has been encouraging our district school board to reconsider the use of styrofoam in HISD. We are hoping that this petition will help us magnify our voice and help convince HISD to make the sustainable choice and switch to biodegradable lunch trays.  

Recently people gathered to do a trash cleanup and one of the biggest and most common things we had to pick up was styrofoam. Additionally, styrofoam breaks down into smaller pieces and it makes it harder for us to pick up. Styrofoam takes over 200 years to decompose, and given that HISD goes through millions of trays a month, our school district is doing serious damage to the environment. 

Districts such as Dallas and Austin ISD have switched to biodegradable trays, and we hope to be the next to take this positive step.  After that, we hope this idea doesn't just stay in our district but further spreads to other districts around Houston and all of Texas. 

We hope to present this petition at the next school board meeting to show that our community supports removing styrofoam lunch trays with HISD. We hope that you will sign and send this to your friends to show that Houston wants HISD to take this environmentally friendly step.