Note: Some of the following quotations have been edited for grammar and clarity. 

In a world facing melting ice caps, rising oceans, worsening weather, and countless other consequences of neglecting the planet, it often seems like the fight against climate change is one with impossible odds. However, the voices of young activists—whether they are as well-known as Greta Thunberg or are simply everyday citizens—are beginning to unite people, inspiring them to work together in movements that are pushing society toward increased sustainability.

This May, a group of Natick students teamed up to create their own movement: Natick High School’s Walk-to-School Week. Beginning on May 15, 2023, students were encouraged to walk, bike, or carpool to school to decrease emissions from vehicles and help combat climate change. As an incentive, the organizers offered a $20 Dunkin’ gift card to the participant that walked or biked the furthest. In addition, the initiative’s Instagram account, @nhswalk, reposted pictures that participants sent or tagged the account in.

“It originally [was] for my Environmental Science class,” said Leah Zarin ’23, social media manager and co-organizer for the initiative. In the class, students were asked to propose a community action that could be taken to help the environment. Leah was immediately inspired to use the opportunity to call attention to—and begin to combat—vehicular emissions. Working alongside Violet Esterman ’23 and Ryan Carlino ’23, she began to spread the word.

According to the initiative’s Instagram account, the average car emits about one pound of carbon dioxide per mile and about 4.6 metric tons of it per year. These carbon emissions work to trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere, making cars a major contributor to global warming. It is because of this danger that the team behind Walk-to-School Week hopes to push students to use more environmentally-friendly means of transportation—not only during Walk-to-School Week, but in the long-term. Fortunately, Leah has noticed the movement’s social media gaining traction: “We have had people following the account—that nobody [...] in the group or their friend groups knows—reaching out and being like, ‘I’d love to participate in this,’” she said. “We do have a reach, [...] which I sort of didn’t expect.”

In conjunction with this initiative, which works to spread awareness about the detrimental effects of cars on the environment, there are many steps that need to be taken by the town to actively facilitate and encourage Natick residents to walk or bike. For example, because of hills, dangerous roads, and areas without sidewalks or crosswalk buttons, residents are implicitly encouraged to use cars as a default method of transportation. As a result, the town earned a “walkability” score of only 65/100. In comparison, Boston is the third most walkable city in the United States with a score of 85/100. Natick is currently working to improve its score and create a safer environment for pedestrians and cyclists through its “Complete Streets” plan.

Additionally, many students feel that walking to school takes too much time. Leah, who has walked to school nearly every morning since the start of her sophomore year, noted that she was finally able to settle into this routine when school start times were pushed back to facilitate hybrid learning. However, now that Natick’s schedule has returned to normal, fewer people are willing to wake up early to walk—especially not those with classes before or during CDS. “One of the reasons that I would appreciate a later start time would be so that it would give people more time to walk to school,” Leah said, offering a new perspective on the town’s recent proposal for an 8:30 start at the high school.

Now that Walk-to-School Week has come to a close, the organizers—each of whom are seniors—are beginning to look to the future. “I hope that it will get continued,” Leah said. “It’s sort of a class, right now, of all seniors, so if other people in the future would want to continue this [...], that would be interesting.” As of now, there is not a definitive team that will lead Walk-to-School Week for the 2023–2024 school year, but continuing the initiative would be a great first step toward sustainability for Natick High School students.

However, according to Leah, there is still a lot that has yet to be done—both by students and by the town as a whole—to get cars off the road: “Making it more convenient to carpool. [...] But also just generally shifting the culture away from depending on cars to get everywhere.”