{"id":388278,"date":"2026-07-27T22:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388278\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T22:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:38:10","slug":"houston-students-turn-thousands-of-plastic-bags-into-an-award-winning-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388278\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston students turn thousands of plastic bags into an award-winning business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston \u2013 Four Houston students are proving that one person\u2019s trash can become another person\u2019s everyday essential.<\/p>\n

Incoming seniors Emmanuel Wieczorek, Ananya Menon, Antonio Psyllos and Haasini Yatagiri of The Village School created Next Use<\/a> a student-run business that transforms donated plastic grocery bags into handcrafted tote bags and pouches.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the growing problem of plastic pollution, the team has collected more than 3,500 plastic bags from the community. They layer and heat-press the bags into a durable material before sewing them into reusable products.<\/p>\n

Their innovative business recently earned national recognition at Junior Achievement\u2019s Future Bound National Competition, where they received the Johnson & Johnson STEM Innovation Award.<\/p>\n

The students say their mission goes beyond making bags. They hope to expand plastic bag collection sites, continue growing their business and eventually donate 10% of their profits to environmental causes that protect marine life.<\/p>\n

As Plastic Free July shines a spotlight on reducing single-use plastics, the founders of Next Use hope their business inspires others to see how small changes can make a big impact.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston \u2013 Four Houston students are proving that one person\u2019s trash can become another person\u2019s everyday essential. Incoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1010,56,58,57,41063],"class_list":["post-388278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-giving-back","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-recycle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}