'Green Team' Students At Queens Elementary School Receive National Honor

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A group of local students who work daily to make a difference locally and globally, received a national honor on Thursday.

As CBS2's Vanessa Murdock reported, the Green Team at PS 69Q in Jackson Heights is on a mission to save the environment.

"When we go out here there's a lot of litter and we're trying to raise awareness about being green," Christopher De Godoy Bitar said.

They garden, compost, and conducted an energy audit for their entire school.

"I was actually somewhat surprised. I thought the stuff we did on the green team was enough, but it wasn't," Alexander Lomboy said.

To conserve more energy, classes assigned light monitors.

The team taught the youngest students -- the kindergarten to second graders -- about being green.

Students created a gigantic pencil as a symbol of just how much waste one school can create. Over the course of four months they collected more than 500 broken pencils.

Through all of their efforts they cut the school's carbon emissions by 150,000-lbs and kept 10,000-lbs of waste from ending up in a landfill.

"I've learned how to be responsible," Sofia DiPaola said.

On Thursday, they were recognized for their impressive and seemingly non-stop efforts to make their school green and clean.

"Today we got the green flag award," DiPaola said.

It was given to them by Ecoschools USA, for their exceptional leadership in sustainability.

"The whole year we've been working, working, working, towards it," Pallavi Shastri said.

Shastri said she's overjoyed by the honor. She started the green team fourteen years ago to inspire young minds.

"If they see something wrong I want them to act on it, interact with life, make things happen," she said.

The kids believe they can change the world one green initiative at a time.

The award included a $5,000 prize. The Green Team wants to install motion censored lights with the money.