Hannah McHardy
Seattle, WA
When Hannah McHardy’s family moved to the Pacific Northwest from Arkansas, Hannah fell in love with the forests of her new home. When she learned that western Washington’s schools were largely funded through logging on millions of acres of state lands, she appealed to the state Board of Natural Resources to spare old growth and institute sustainable timber harvest practices. Hannah then founded The Old Growth Project at Nova High School where she and her classmates persuaded their administration to switch from using virgin fiber paper to 100 percent post-consumer-waste, chlorine-free paper—a move that will save more than 50 large trees per year. Hannah then organized teach-ins to expose timber giant Weyerhaeuser’s destruction of old growth forests. “I believe education is the most powerful form of activism,” said Hannah. She led a demonstration to hang a banner from a freeway overpass at rush hour and hand delivered two thousand letters from fellow concerned students to Weyerhaeuser’s CEO.