UNC student entrepreneur wins $25,000 to fund her sustainable venture

Kirstie Moore has received $25,000 for her sustainable venture from Victoria’s Secret Pink with Purpose Project.

Co-founder Mallory Wolfe Turner

Moore – a senior at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School from Charlotte – is co-founder and chief marketing officer of LocalRoots Compost, which she co-founded with Mallory Wolfe Turner, a PhD student at the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.

LocalRoots Compost leverages the combined buying power of local restaurants to secure low prices on compostable food ware, and then incentivizes restaurant patrons to compost those products. Its mission is to make sustainable choices easier for businesses and people of all ethnicities and levels of wealth.

Moore is one of just 15 recipients who received $25,000 award from Victoria Secret Pink with Purpose Project, which recognizes inspiring young adults to fund their projects supporting community, sustainability or mental health.

She is committed to environmental and social justice problems. During 2020, she saw the use of single-use plastics increasing, partially due to a surge in takeout.

“This crisis is a public health problem because the sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing, and disposal of plastics disproportionately pollute Black, Brown and low-wealth communities leading to elevated risks of cancer and asthma,” she says. “Compostable serviceware is expensive, and most still end up in landfills where they emit greenhouse gases. We want to change that.”