Suffield High School’s Sustainability Council (SSC) is back and better than ever this school year! SSC is a group of dedicated high school students working to continually create an increasingly environmentally sustainable school system. The composting program implemented at the high school last year, thanks to SSC, is already in full swing. Due to the success at SHS, the council’s current primary focus is implementing a composting system into the cafeterias of the rest of the Suffield Public Schools, starting at Spaulding Elementary School. We have high hopes that composting will be rolled out at Spaulding as soon as early November. This is thanks to the help of Suffield’s First Selectman Colin Moll, who has partnered with SSC with the shared goal of establishing composting throughout the district. In order to implement the composting system, we are partnering with USA Recycling, who have been operating in Suffield for the past 30 years, picking up both trash and recycling townwide.
The SSC leadership team, composed of six high school students, senior Jack McCullough, juniors Heidi Storey, Keila Silva, Sarah Swenson, and Riley Walton, and sophomore Caden DeCesare, along with council head Justin Kaput, have been working tirelessly these first months. We’ve been conducting meetings with Mr. Moll and his team, the elementary school team leaders and USA Recycling to plan the roll out and creating educational materials for students and teachers of Spaulding Elementary.
USA Recycling has been a wonderful and enthusiastic partner thus far and we look forward to collaborating with them on this project, as well as possible future ones, such as bringing composting to both McAlister Intermediate School and Suffield Middle School.
We absolutely cannot wait for this project to get underway, as it has been something our council has wanted to initiate for many years. But that’s not all! In order to make our town a cleaner place and get more high schoolers involved in sustainable efforts, on Thursday, October 12, SSC led a group of student volunteers in a cleanup around SHS and the surrounding area. We were inspired by the October 14 town-wide cleanup headed by Sustainable Suffield, our town’s dedicated Sustainable Task Force, who have also joined our efforts to expand the composting system at the Suffield schools.
Lastly, on November 6, a group of students in SSC are set to attend a summit hosted by the Western Mass Youth Climate Leadership Program (WMYCLP). This summit allows students to learn more about climate solutions and discuss a plethora of issues relating to sustainability and the environment, as well as develop climate action plans to bring back to their schools to create changes there. Big strides have already been made as we head into the 2023-2024 school year, and we hope to keep making excellent progress as it continues!