“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” Hoesung Lee, Chair of the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), said following the IPCC’s 2022 climate report. This report issued a frightening conclusion: unless sweeping action is taken quickly, the effects of climate change will increase to such a degree that adapting to them will be impossible. Despite this scientifically-backed discovery and the existential issue it poses, there has been an infuriating lack of action in our government. As young people, Natick High School students strongly fear a future ridden with the effects of climate change—or, worse, no future at all. Especially in the face of widespread inaction, we know that our community must do its part. As Natick High School looks forward to a new school year and new administration, it must continue its trajectory towards a smaller environmental footprint.

An environmental audit done for Natick High School a few years ago found that 50% of the cafeteria waste was compostable. As such, a composting program would make a huge impact on NHS’s environmental footprint. 

This year, students in NHS’s Earth Club instituted a composting program in our school cafeteria. In collaboration with the Natick Sustainability Committee, Black Earth composting, and TV Broadcasting student Rachel Garrity ’23, Earth Club members obtained composting bins, developed an incentive program, and gave up two weeks of lunches to staff the composting table. About a month after the February 28th launch of the composting program, the school’s compost filled two 48-gallon bins each week. Earth Club member Nora Moldover ’23 was excited about how well-received the program was. However, Nora was disappointed in students who pretended to compost just to get a lollipop (which was the reward for composting), and in the fact that composting levels have decreased since the two-week incentive program ended. 

The composting program was an important step towards decreasing NHS’s food waste, but it must be expanded in future years. To prioritize quality over quantity for the composting program’s first year, Earth Club decided to start with only one compost bin so that they could make sure that people composted only food waste. (Adding non-compostable items can contaminate the entire load of compost.) However, they hope to be able to expand their program to the school kitchen to capture food waste coming from meal prep, and to the preschool. In addition, although Nora was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who were willing to walk to the middle of the cafeteria to compost, adding compost bins to different areas of the cafeteria would likely increase the number of students who compost, simply because it would be easier to remember to compost and to get to the bin in time. Other possible ways to expand Natick’s composting program include allowing students to compost compostable materials that aren’t food, such as napkins, and informing students that they can sign up to compost at home through Black Earth Composting. 

The composting program is focusing on the 50% of the NHS cafeteria’s waste that is compostable, so we need other programs to tackle the remaining 50%. Introducing reusable or compostable plates, bowls, and utensils would be a great way to do this. Currently, school lunch is served in tinfoil, on styrofoam trays, in paper bowls with a non-recyclable wax coating, or in plastic bowls, with non-recyclable plastic utensils. The tinfoil and plastic bowls would be recyclable if they were free of food residue; however, they are almost always contaminated by the food that was served on them. Beside the bathroom sinks, there are no sinks available in the cafeteria to decontaminate them. Investing in sinks or, better yet, reusable kitchenware would eliminate a major source of waste for the school, and would prevent them from having to buy new kitchenware every day. 

In addition to its small scale, another challenge for the composting program is the school’s lack of composting knowledge. On more than one occasion, Earth Club volunteers have had to fish non-compostable items out of the heap of half-eaten food in the compost bin so that the entire load wouldn’t be contaminated. If students knew more about which items they could and couldn’t compost, this issue would be avoided. Furthermore, increased education about composting and the climate crisis in general would make it so that more students composted because they wanted to help the environment, rather than because they wanted lollipops and raffle tickets. 

As such, an important policy change for Natick High School (and all of the Natick Public Schools) to make is increased education about the effects and solutions of the climate crisis. Students are guaranteed to grow up in a world influenced by a changing environment. Not learning about this in school will not make the problem go away. In fact, it will make it worse, as it will cause students to be less motivated and prepared to advocate for solutions—or to develop solutions themselves. 

Miriam Siegel ’22 is one of the action coordinators for Sunrise NHS, a club that fights for climate policy as part of the national youth-led Sunrise Movement. In an interview, she said that climate education must extend down to our youngest students, who will be impacted by the climate crisis most of all. She also stressed the importance of students learning that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the marginalized communities who contributed the least to the problem. If this wasn’t included in climate education, the solutions students grow up to create would not address the climate crisis fully or equitably. 

Miriam added that switching to 100% clean energy is the most important step NHS can take in decreasing its environmental footprint. Earth Club member Sage Nguyen ’23 agreed, saying that NHS uses a lot of electricity because it is such a large building, so carbon neutrality would have a drastic impact on the school’s environmental footprint. As Miriam pointed out, “[t]he install of the solar panels in the faculty lot in 2020 was a big step forward, but as the climate crisis reaches a point of no return, we need to be achieving 100% clean energy as soon as possible.” This is especially true since, according to an article by Natick Patch, the solar panels were predicted to produce less than half of NHS’s 2,000,000 kWh/year energy use, meaning that a significant amount of our energy still comes from nonrenewable sources.

Other ideas for decreasing NHS’s impact on the environment include setting up a portal or dropbox for student ideas about increased sustainability and organizing climate-centered events, such as trash pick-ups and educational sessions about the climate crisis and its solutions.

Natick High School has a plethora of ways to decrease its environmental impact, and it must begin to implement more of them. Our school supports its students’ futures by providing them with a quality education, so, through actions and policies, it must decrease its environmental impact so that students have a liveable planet on which to carry out their futures.