Sustainability at Milton
by MAX LITVAK ‘20
As the issue of climate change intensifies by the day, Milton strives to be sustainable and reduce its impact on the environment. The sustainability board as well as campus security and other staff works towards making Milton a greener school. One of the main goals is to reduce waste and to deal with our trash more effectively.
Recently, Ms. Engstrom spoke in assembly about some of Milton’s sustainability initiatives. During a follow-up interview, she explained how her last school, the Millbrook school in New York, was very eco-friendly and had a solar field. After coming to Milton, she became the faculty sponsor for the sustainability board. This year, the sustainability board has been working on improving our means of composting. Milton works with two composting companies: Bootstrap, a residential and commercial food scrap pickup service in the Greater Boston area, and Troupe, a more general waste and recycling business. The dorms use Bootstrap composting, and the dining hall uses Troupe. All of our compost goes to hidden acre farms in Medway where it decomposes in windrows, long rows of compost. Impressively, all of our food waste, including Sage’s and the community’s waste, is composted. On average, Milton produces about eighty pounds of food waste every day, but this number has been down about ten percent in the past week.
Although all of the food waste from Forbes is composted, not all food waste on campus goes through this process. Milton is working towards adding composting services for the junior building, Elliot commons, Pritzker, Kellner, and the offices in the CSG. With compost’s being one of the sustainability board’s biggest projects, the board has accomplished a lot and plans to improve its services further.
In addition to composting, diversion of waste from landfills and recycling as much as possible have become foals of Milton, too. Two of the companies that Milton works with to accomplish this goal are Baystate, which started working with Milton in 2016, and Terracycle, which only recently started working with Milton. Baystate recycles all kinds of fabrics and textiles no matter their condition. The Baystate dumpster is next to the Junior Building. Terracycle collects waste and then works with other companies to repurpose it. Milton uses two of Terracycle's programs: recycling of Burt’s Bees products and recycling of tooth care products. The sustainability board is working to include more of Terracycle's services, although no other services are available at the moment. Milton has also had days designated to e-waste recycling and is going to have another one soon. Milton will bring a dumpster to campus for any old electronic devices. Properly disposing of e-waste is important because poorly disposed e-waste can release harmful toxins into the atmosphere.
Milton’s staff works to improve sustainability at Milton in many ways. Campus security is trying to limit Milton’s use of energy by working on optimizing the lighting and heating systems. The book store is trying to limit plastic bottle sales by ordering more glass bottles and cans. In addition to the bookstore’s selling fewer plastic bottles, the sustainability board is trying to better understand students’ beverage needs so that the student center renovations can include appliances that promote reusable water bottles and fewer bottled drinks.
The Sustainability Board and Milton staff are doing a great job to lessen Milton’s carbon footprint, but they can do only so much. Some of the responsibility rests on students to make good choices to help the environment. To raise awareness for these issues, the sustainability board is planning to release a newsletter every other week and to bring in a speaker in April. Our community’s attitude towards sustainability does seem like it has improved this year. When asked, Brendan Hegarty, class II, said that although he thinks that sustainability is not usually a pressing matter to many students, he has been thinking about it more, especially after Mrs. Engstrom’s talks in assembly.
Milton has already accomplished a lot in terms of reducing waste and making the school more sustainable, but there is still more work to be done. Pierce Wilson (I), a co-head of the sustainability board, said that some of its greatest accomplishments have come from bootstrap composting, eco-olympics, and earth months. He also said that as the year goes on, the sustainability board plans to expand the bootstrap composting system, decrease the use of paper plates and disposable bottles on campus, and gear up for Earth month.