Six Arlington High School environmental student leaders had the opportunity to share their work with educators from across the state at the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society (MEES) Conference held on March 6. This is an event that Arlington Public School Sustainability Coordinator Rachel Oliveri and Town Recycling Coordinator Charlotte Milan have been attending since 2019. They have had four workshop proposals accepted during this time, and two, like the current one, were student-led.
Juniors Sophie Shen and Amethyst Stencik, and Seniors Sadie Ford, Elise Kempf, Miriam Oliveri-Schneider, and Walter Vincent were the students who attended the Conference. In their presentation, Youth-led Models of Equitable Waste Diversion, they shared the three projects they lead.
- Full Circle Compost (FCC), is a free student-run compost collection and disposal service for Arlington residents. The goal of FCC is to take the cost out of composting so that anyone can participate. Their team of 10 high school seniors and volunteers currently serve fifty clients plus the Arlington Town Hall, and 11,655 pounds of food waste have been collected since FCC began in 2020.
- The AHS Slash the Trash Team is dedicated to reducing waste in the school lunchroom. The main part of their work is sorting through trash to make sure that everything gets to the right place. Separating out food scraps, compostable materials, and recyclable containers for proper disposal has led to a 25% reduction in lunchroom trash output. The team advocates for the use of products that reduce waste and provides composting and environmental justice education through Advisory sessions and Inclusion workshops.
- Project Zero Arlington transforms large and small in-town events into low waste ones. Their free sustainability services include: providing compostable/reusable party supplies; providing compost and recycling service; setting up and cleaning up after events; providing volunteers to wash reusable supplies; and helping with the sorting process. These services can be accessed through Arlington’s Reuse and Recycling Center.
Juniors Sophie and Amethyst are representative of the participating students. When she was a freshman, Sophie noticed that there was a lot of plastic in the school compost bins. She reached out to Ms Oliveri about the possibility of a sorting program, was connected with Sadie Ford and Walter Vincent, and the three young people became the initial members of the Slash the Trash team. Amethyst Stencik is the co-founder and co-chair of Project Zero, along with Walter Vincent. As a rising sixth grade student, she became involved in environmental action after participating in Earthcore, a summer program offered by Ms. Oliveri and Ms. Milan. Amethyst started volunteering at the Reuse and Recycling Center her freshman year. This March was the first time either student had been to an MEES conference.
At first Sophie was a bit intimidated presenting in front of a large group of educators, but their respect for her and what she is accomplishing became clear early on. Many of the attendees were looking for the student perspective on values and how to make a difference in one’s community. She states: “That really felt empowering to me because I think that all too often youth voices are not respected in the same way adult voices are. People reacted positively, with many participants asking questions about how they could implement a similar program in their schools.”
Amethyst reports that “It was a wonderful experience to share Project Zero with such a large audience.” She and Walter are proud of what they have created, and she observes that “This conference was the first time the people hearing about my work were equally as excited as I was.” Amethyst says that it was good to be speaking to an audience that understands how big an issue single-use plastics really are, and she was happy to answer the questions about how Project Zero runs and funds their supplies.
A “mock ecofair” followed the students' presentations and they manned a table and continued to answer questions. Slash the Trash provided donated postcards and information about bills currently going through the state legislature so attendees could write to their representatives. They also hosted a sorting station where people could put items found in the conference lunchroom into their correct categories. Project Zero showed some examples of their supplies and ran a trivia event, and Full Circle Compost offered an activity to rank the biodegradability of different materials.
The students were also able to attend other presentations. Amethyst's favorite was the one by a local artist who talked about climate activism through different art forms. Sophie was impressed with the workshop on energy-efficient architecture using the Passive House model. The level of contribution to carbon emissions by buildings was new information for her, and she was glad to learn more about how, in her words,”... people can pursue so many different careers and find creative ways to contribute to climate solutions in their field of expertise.”
Sophie was glad to experience a conference setting and have the opportunity to share ideas and learn more about what others are doing in the environmental arena. Being able to practice her presentation skills was a great benefit as she expects to do more of this in the future. Additionally, she shares “I was truly impressed by the different and creative ways in which these environmental educators were making a difference in their own communities.”
Amethyst sums up her feelings about attending the conference this way: “The biggest benefit to me personally about presenting and attending MEES was meeting people who shared the same passion for climate activism that I do. I’m very lucky to have six individuals who work on projects with adjacent mission statements to my own. It was incredible to meet hundreds of others who share similar success stories.”
Seniors Elise Kempf and Miriam Oliveri-Schneider also had some thoughts to share about their experience. Miriam says “I love how the MEES conference provided us with the opportunity to share Full Circle’s mission with others and inspire adult and youth attendees to join us in our equity-focused fight for the environment!” Connecting with environmental educators from across New England and learning about their work was very motivating for her. She continues “It was great to exchange ideas and help people find a way to bring a service like FCC to their hometowns.”
Elise found the MEES Conference “...an amazing experience and I had so much fun getting to present my own project with my peers…” She describes the opportunity this way: “It was really cool to be able to teach people things regarding something I am passionate about and share my experiences with FCC–both the challenges and accomplishments.” Learning about the other projects going on in Massachusetts was very meaningful for Elise, and she says “Seeing and even attending some of the other workshops at the conference made me excited about the future of other possibilities in environmental education and how there really is a great community working in this area.”
Ms. Oliveri had this to say about the students’ participation in the MEES Conference: “I was incredibly impressed by their presentation at the conference. They put so much work into the preparation, thoughtfully and creatively designing their slides and determining which activities they would do for their ecofair table. They attended multiple meetings and practice sessions and all their hard work paid off with a skillful, engaging workshop for a room full of educators, other youth, and representatives from government and non profit environmental organizations.”