This fall students will be given the chance to participate in the sixth annual Lexus Eco Challenge to win part of $500,000 in grants and scholarships.

Lexus and Scholastic Inc. have teamed up for sixth year in a row to help inspire students to learn more about the environment and take the necessary action to improve it. Over $3.5 million total has been awarded to students, teachers and schools all over the U.S. the past six years, and 22,000 middle school and high school students have benefited for their efforts in trying to make the world a more environmentally friendly place to live in.

Registration for the Lexus Eco Challenge is currently open and will announce the first-place and grand-prize-winning teams in the spring of 2013.  Middle school and high school teams can consist of 5-10 students and a teacher advisor, and each team can participate in either one or both challenges.

The Challenge features two distinct elements:

1. Standards-based supplementary educational materials - encourages teachers to integrate creative lesson plans into their classrooms to help teach students about the environment.

2. Competition to reward environmental action - helps young people apply what they've learned in class through the program and empowers them to make improvements in their community by participating in the environmental team challenges.

For each of the specific challenges, teams are required to define an environmental issue that is important, develop an action plan that they will address, go through with the plan and report the results. Challenge 1 has to include land or water while Challenge 2 must include air or climate.

The deadline for Challenge 1 is Oct. 29, while the deadline for Challenge 2 is Dec. 17. Each challenge will have 16 winning teams, eight from middle school and eight from high school. Those teams who win will receive a total of approximately $10,000. The winning teams from each challenge will then be asked to participate in the Final Challenge. This Challenge includes being asked to go beyond just the local community and inspire environmental action around the world through innovative ideas that are communicated to a wide audience.

From the Final Challenge entries, eight first-place teams and two grand-prize-winning teams will be selected. Each of the eight first-place teams will receive a total of $15,000 in grants and scholarships, and the two grand-prize-winning teams will each receive $30,000. The money will be shared by the students, their teacher advisors and their schools.

For more information check out the Eco Challenge website: https://lexus.scholastic.com/ 

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