MIRAMAR, Fla. – Local 10′s quest to find this year’s Eco Hero continues this week, as we introduce you each day to one of our top five finalists.
One high school student with a passion for our planet will win a once-in-a-lifetime adventure to Australia and will be the subject of a primetime special here on Local 10.
From raging wildfires to catastrophic flooding and record breaking hurricanes that affected her own family, high school junior Anagha Iyer saw the effects of climate change and wanted to do something.
“I wanted to start advocating for real policies that would make a real change in the world, so I formed the Broward Sierra Group Junior Team for high school students to express their concerns and have their voices heard,” she said.
And those voices have been heard loud and clear.
Recently, Iyer, who is a Miramar resident, has been speaking out at news conferences and commission meetings, voicing her opposition to Miami-Dade County’s proposed incinerator.
“I was representing what all of us are thinking, which is this incinerator should not be built,” she said. “Not just near Miramar, but really shouldn’t be built at all. There are other alternatives like zero waste.”
Sustainability is also at the core of Iyer’s junior year science project.
At American Heritage High School, she is working on sustainable concrete, An idea inspired by the Surfside condominium collapse and tragedy in 2021.
Outside the classroom, as the chair of the Sierra Club’s Junior Team, Iyer is passionate about protecting the environment, working on the green schools campaign to transition Broward County Schools to 100% clean energy.
“The Broward County School Board recently passed a resolution saying they are going to make the effort to do this transition in Broward County schools, which was a huge accomplishment for us,” she said. “A lot more work needs to be done so that they enforce it and see it into fruition, but that was definitely very exciting.”
Also exciting is the possibility of a journey to Australia to continue her studies into the effects of culture on the environment.
“Some of the work I do here is with underprivileged communities that might not understand climate change in the same way that you or me might understand it, so seeing a different perspective in a whole different country, a whole different continent actually, would be a really great honor,” she said.
As an eco-warrior, Iyer wants other teens to know you are never too young to get involved.
“Elected officials will listen more to young people because they are the future,” she said. “We are the future of this planet. We are the ones that will have to take on all of the challenges.”