Larson’s older brother is also an Eagle Scout, earning his rank when he created and donated benches to Erik Ramstad Middle School in 2010.

Larson, intent on following his older brother’s footsteps, decided he, too, would like to construct benches for Erik Ramstad, but Larson’s benches would differ from his brother’s in a unique way.

“My mom is a teacher here at Ramstad and she always does Earth Day for the school. So, she’s the one who first came up with the idea of, ‘Hey why don’t you make the benches out of bottle caps,’ I was like, ‘OK!'” Larson said.

The program Larson decided to go through to create the benches was the ABC Promise Partnership. The ABC stands for “A Bench for Caps” and it operates under the Green Tree Plastics company in Evansville, Indiana.

Audin Rhodes/MDN Carter Larson was recently awarded his Eagle Scout badge for his bottle cap benches project . Plaques were recently installed on the benches.

Larson’s next step was collecting the caps. To make a four foot bench from bottle caps through the ABC Promise Partnership, 100 pounds of plastic caps need to be collected and donated for processing in addition to payment for the processing.

Because Larson planned to donate three benches to the middle school, he needed to collect 300 pounds of plastic caps for his project.

“Approximately 90 plastic water bottle caps will equal one pound,” said Barbara Winterrowd, president of the ABC Promise Partnership with Green Tree Plastics.

Based on this metric, Larson needed to collect about 9,000 plastic bottle caps for one bench, adding up to around 27,000 caps total for the three benches.

Larson had to get creative in achieving this and started by collaborating with Erik Ramstad Middle School.

“I talked to the principal about doing a little competition between the sixth, seventh and eighth graders,” Larson said. The class that collected the most bottle caps won the competition and the reward was allowing the students of that class to be on their phones during lunch period.

“That’s how we got most of the caps,” Larson said. “It’s been a long process. When I first started this out, I thought it would be, like, maybe one or two years.”

It took about one year to collect the 300 pounds of bottle caps required for the bench making process.

After collecting the caps, Larson sorted and cleaned each one, sometimes finding garbage, including paperclips and even an entire banana that had rotted.

Larson had some younger Cub Scouts help him with this part of the process.

“Younger Scouts have to get a certain amount of service hours on an Eagle Scout’s project so that’s another thing that helps too. You can get some younger Scouts to help with your project,” Larson said.

Larson got creative once again and incentivized his Cub Scouts with snacks.

“I said whoever washes the most caps gets gummies,” he said. “It was a great way to keep them focused on the task.”

Once the caps were washed and bagged up, it was time for the caps to travel 18 hours to Evansville, Indiana, to be processed.

“Each group, whenever they come to drop off their caps at their scheduled appointment, they are picking up their ordered items in one scheduled appointment. So their caps are going to go into another group’s order as another group’s caps went into their order,” Winterrowd said.

This means the 300 pounds of caps Larson collected were actually processed and made into benches for a different group somewhere else in the nation.

The reason the program operates this way is to keep the recycling loop going and to provide people their orders in one visit rather than two, since it takes two-four weeks to process the hundreds of pounds of caps into benches. This makes it easier for the thousands of groups across 45 states to travel to Indiana to drop off their caps and pick up their order in one trip.

Larson’s caps were the first batch of caps from North Dakota to arrive at Green Tree Plastics and, likewise, the benches from his project are the first to directly leave Green Tree Plastics and make their way to North Dakota.

Once the bench parts were back in North Dakota, Larson assembled them and installed them at Erik Ramstad, the middle school Larson attended growing up.

“I’ve had a lot of fond memories here and I thought, ‘Why not give back? Why not make something convenient for everyone?’ Because you don’t really have anywhere to sit and watch for football, track or softball,” Larson said.

The bottle cap benches are not cemented in the ground and are light enough to spin around to face either the softball diamond or football field and track, depending on the school event happening. The benches are also heavy enough to withstand the windy days and various weather patterns on North Hill, and as a bonus, the benches will never fade in color.

Two of Larson’s Scoutmasters were in attendance at Larson’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor ceremony. Travis Anderson was Larson’s Scoutmaster for Larson’s first two-three years in Scouts and James Walker was Larson’s Scoutmaster for Larson’s last two years.

“I had so much fun with them. Just going on campouts, getting new merit badges, spending time with my friends. All of that was fun,” Larson said. Larson earned 35 merit badges during his time in Scouting, which included canoeing, fishing, motorboating and many more activities. He served in leadership positions with the Scouts as well.

At 18, Larson may be concluding his time in Scouts, but once an Eagle always an Eagle.

“Maybe when I have kids one day I’ll bring them into Scouting and help them on their way,” Larson said.

Larson is currently a Certified Nursing Assistant and lifeguard and hopes to attend a university with college swimming once he graduates from Minot High this spring. Larson wants to major in sports medicine and pursue a career in physical therapy.