Lucy Hansen
Assistant Features Editor
The girls of the Mira Costa Green Team work hard to make their community, and the world, a better place. The Green Team has been organizing community-betterment projects all year long, including beach and marina clean ups and clothing drives. Their recent clothing swap however, is one of their best projects yet.
The clothing swap was on March 23. For the past month they have collected donations all over Costa and even at Manhattan Beach Middle School. They’ve also spent their weekly meetings prepping by, making posters, sorting through clothes, and coordinating with the school. They have been trying to do a clothing swap on this scale for years.
“My sophomore year we were talking about ideas focusing on waste and we knew that fashion was a huge issue,” said senior president Claire Koerber. “It was on a much smaller scale that year and we didn’t have half as many clothes as we have today. This year we received over 1000 pieces.”
The girls worked hard every day collecting clothes and donating their own time and resources to setting up the swap, spending as little as possible. Club members say that this is the most impressive and successful clothing drive they’ve had for a while, leaving them hopeful for the next one.
“For our next clothing swap, we want something in April around Earth Day,” said junior Creative Director Veronica Escopete. “I’ve already been using Canva to design some Earth-Day themed. The last one didn’t take too long to set up, so I think this one is going to go well.”
“Our clothing swaps and our cleanups have really grown throughout the years, “ said club member Lila Murphy. “It’s just really cool to watch the community start to join our club and come together to clean up everything”.
Everything was free and the event made no profit, the motive was to promote sustainability. As a club focused on the environment, they considered fast fashion an important issue.
“I think it’s really inspiring that the youth of Manhattan beach are working so hard to better our community,” said sophomore Emery Vandermore, “It makes me feel really optimistic about the future and my generation’s involvement.”
Young people working to make an impact in their communities will never fall short of inspiring. These students seem to understand the importance of taking action now and putting in the effort; and they hope their motivation will spread.
“It’s just really cool how we can involve the kids on campus with bettering the environment,” said member Sienna Agnes. “I want to make sure they know that they can make an impact.”
As for the students who haven’t gotten involved, the club encourages everyone to do their part and to help out in the community.
“Even if it might not seem like the coolest thing, it’s actually really awesome and they’re contributing to a lot of solutions to climate change.” Said Koerber, “they don’t even think about all the problems the fashion industry causes, but there’s always a creative way to solve those problems.”
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