North’s Green Team hosted Sustainability Day featuring wooden carnival games, displays from local and global sustainability organizations, and presentations from the Green Team’s own clubs, during d-block outside the cafeteria, Friday May 2.
The clubs featured at sustainability day included Climate Collective, NNHS Garden Project, and Zero Waste Club. According to senior John O’Donovan, an officer of Climate Collective, the event was mainly organized by teachers but the displays were run by student club officers and members.
“We’ve been doing a lot with community organizing,” O’Donovan said. “We’re trying to make climate action feel less scary to people.”
Climate Collective displayed and passed out magazines made from club members’ drawings, relating to sustainability, O’Donovan said.
According to French teacher and Green Team captain Kathryn Teissier du Cros, the wooden carnival games came from an organization called Mass Energize. The green team made a donation to the organization, and in return the organization supplied them with a collection of hand made wooden games, all containing components relating to climate change.
The games are designed to encourage fun and meaningful conversations about climate change, Teissier du Cros said.
Plant Based Treaty, a global grassroots association, attended North’s sustainability day to educate students on the benefits of a plant based diet on the environment.
According to Plant Based Treaty representative Kimmy Cushman, “We’re here today to educate people about how they can be more sustainable through eating plant based food, and also how they can take action in their own communities to make a more sustainable food system.”
Cushman said that the association has chapters around the world that are largely volunteer run. The group just recently started a Newton chapter.
“One of the things that students can do is advocate for having more plant based food in the cafeteria at school,” Cushman said. “We’re encouraging people to reach out to their city councilors by asking the city counsellors to take action in the city of Newton, to be a climate leader by promoting plant based foods.”
The association provided postcards at their table to be filled out and sent to city counselors, asking them to make a food action plan as part of their climate action plan.
Newton Community Farms representatives Allyson MacKenna and Deborah Perry displayed a collection of unique items found on their farm, such as a giant moth, a giant killer wasp, and a chunk of hawk feces at their table.
“When people visit the farm – especially kids – and find something they think is cool, we tell them they can bring it to us to display in a jar,” MacKenna said.
According to MacKenna, Newton Community Farms is a non-profit organization that works on sustainable agriculture and education programs. The farm also sells fresh produce and participates in the Newton farmers market.
“We have programs for all ages, and we do a high school intern program where you can work side by side with our farmers,” MacKenna said.
According to sophomore Leyla Gustin, a member of the NNHS Garden Project the club has begun restoring a neglected garden near the courtyard. They plan to plant kale, lettuce, and cucumbers — the same crops used in sustainability classes. Sophomore Madeline Rhine, a member of the NNHS garden project said, “We are hoping this carries past when we graduate so that it can become something bigger and expand outside of the school as well.”
Newton climate action coordinator, Caroline Weiss, displayed a poster with categories seeking feedback from students for the city’s climate action plan, taking place from 2025-2030.
The categories included buildings, clean energy, consumption, resilience, and transportation.
Weiss also discussed the “Take Action For Our Future Program,” a program of the City of Newton Climate and Sustainability Team in which she is a supervisor.
“It’s an education program for residents to look at things like heat pumps, solar, electric vehicles and insulation,” said Weiss. “They can go to the website and get more information on financial incentives.”
The program has ten volunteer coaches according to Weiss, and offers a 30 minute consultation about energy efficient appliances to anyone in Newton who signs up.
In addition to the feedback poster, Weiss’s display showcased a 3D printed model house, equipped with 20 ‘green’ features.
The features were printed in a green color to symbolize their potential to be environmentally beneficial, according to Weiss.
Waste diversion coordinator for the city of Newton, Allison Kelley, explained how to collect food scraps separately from regular trash at her station.
Kelley explained how the city is working on adding separate bins for food scraps into the cafeteria, faculty lounges, and kitchens at North.
The zero waste club table contained a poster showcasing the club’s accomplishments, such as attending Mason Rice Elementary School and teaching the students about how to reduce waste, according to senior Bea Fernandez-Medina.
“We made posters and showed them within their lunches what could and could not be recycled and then as they went up to throw their stuff away we told them what bins everything could go in,” Fernandez – Medina said.
She added that next year the club hopes to implement a food diversion program in order to redirect food that otherwise would have been thrown away at North to the Newton Food Party.
