AUSTIN – Alyssa Le has been selected as a winner in the 2020 Don’t mess with Texas Scholarship Contest. She is a recent graduate of Lawrence E. Elkins High School in Missouri City, Texas. Alyssa was awarded a $4,000 college scholarship, which she will apply toward her studies in linguistics and business at The University of Texas at Austin.

The Don’t mess with Texas Scholarship Contest is presented annually in partnership with Keep Texas Beautiful and recognizes the achievements of Texas high school seniors who demonstrate a leadership role in preventing litter in their schools and communities while building awareness of the Don’t mess with Texas litter-prevention campaign. A total of $13,500 in scholarships was awarded to four high school seniors. The 2020 scholarships were sponsored by iHeartMedia, Buc-ee’s, the Houston Astros Foundation and San Antonio Spurs Sports & Entertainment.

In 2018, Alyssa formed a company called EVO which develops and sells bamboo straws as sustainable alternatives to plastic straws in an effort to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the Houston area. In 2020, the student-led company introduced ThreEVO, a straw kit complete with three reusable bamboo straws with two different diameters, a completely biodegradable case and a bristle brush cleaner. Over the past two years, EVO has sold over 1,000 reusable straws that potentially prevented approximately 36,000 plastic straws from becoming litter.

Don’t mess with Texas has been educating Texans about litter prevention since 1986. The campaign is the signature program for TxDOT’s litter prevention initiatives, which include Adopt-a-Highway, a grassroots partnership with Keep Texas Beautiful, and the community outreach and cleanup event, the Don’t mess with Texas Trash-Off. For additional information on Don’t mess with Texas, visit Dontmesswithtexas.org.

For media inquiries, contact TxDOT Media Relations at [email protected] or (512) 463-8700.