When my daughter, Olivia Moreland, told me last summer that she wanted to pick up trash at her school, I thought it was a passing fancy, something that she would forget when the school year started. But she didn’t forget. She persisted and decided she wanted to create Earth Patrol, a group at her school that could help. Since the club’s formation, ambassadors – as members are known – have recycled Capri Sun drink pouches through TerraCycle, performed regular classroom audits to monitor recycling and reuse activities, scoured the campus in monthly cleanup efforts and planted hundreds of bulbs donated by Mecklenburg County as part of the 2012 Great American Clean-Up and Keep Mecklenburg Beautiful campaign.