A Brief History of the Friends School Sustainability Council

As part of a summer grant in 2012, Scott Harrington, Deb Kinder, and Michael Paulson met to brainstorm ideas about how to make Friends School a more sustainable campus and community. After reviewing various ongoing efforts at Friends, they decided to focus on 3 general areas that have a significant impact on the school: Waste, Transportation, and Energy. In addition, the group talked with RPCS’s sustainability coordinator in order to share best practices,wrote the first drafts of a sustainability statement, proposed a Sustainability Council (now meeting regularly) and met with Dining Hall staff to discuss composting (now implemented in the Dining Hall and around campus). Now, in 2014, the current Sustainability Council has decided that Friends School needs to advertise the work that has been and still needs to be done on campus and in our community. This blog will be part of that; so, we hope, will you. The Sustainability Council will continue to meet, but this year it has also agreed to meet more regularly as smaller subcommittees focused on specific issues; more information about those subcommittees will be included in a future post.