GREEN is the New Black Harpeth Hall sustainability initiatives encourage students to make meaningful contributions to their communities and the world by Jessie Morris Adams ’00
Every few minutes, someone in the group inevitably paused to remark, “I just can’t believe the water was this high.” On a sunny spring day, a group of Upper School students and faculty gathered to tend to an area that suffered damage after recent floods and heavy rains. They picked remnants of plastic bags out of trees and tried to envision how tables and cars were picked up and moved hundreds of yards by rushing water. After a thorough round of trash collection, the group moved on to planting dozens of tiny saplings with the hope that enough would survive and grow into sufficiently strong trees to prevent future erosion of the creek banks. In one afternoon, they not only tackled the tangible consequences of damage already done, but also took steps to strengthen the area against future impacts. While not all Harpeth Hall club outings provide such tidy lessons, this experience encompassed our students’ understanding of our collective impact on our environment — whether that is Harpeth Hall’s 40-acre campus, the Nashville area, or the entire world. Interest in sustainable practices and environmental education has grown steadily over recent decades as the limits of the resources we rely on become increasingly apparent. As an educational institution and a hub of the Nashville community, Harpeth Hall realizes its duty to graduate 21st-century leaders equipped with the skills and knowledge to tackle the challenges their generation may face. Our commitment to sustainability has strong roots in our devotion to community. Holding close our mission to “develop responsible citizens with global perspectives who make meaningful contributions to their communities and to the world,” we recognize that a critical first step to impacting the outside community is to build our internal community. By harnessing students’ passion to do good for others, we also strengthen their bonds to each other and to the school. We see the impact of that connection not only during the spring days that students gather for disaster relief, but also in the bins on campus 10 | HARPETH HALL HALLWAYS
brimming with compostable items during lunchtime and in the student clothing swap initiative meant to reduce the number of shirts and sweaters that end up in a landfill. We experience the power of purposeful sustainability as we upgrade the energy efficiency of our school buildings and create dedicated green spaces on campus, like the Dr. Stephanie Balmer Garden for Student Engagement. “We’re all working together as a community to have an impact,” said Annie Stewart ’21, who this past school year was co-president of Harpeth Hall’s Green Team, an Upper School club. “We all act as individuals, but our collective actions really add up.”
From green lunch containers to green landscapes
Even daily rituals such as lunch on campus can include small actions with a purpose. Students experience tangible reminders of our partnership with Compost Nashville as they compost remnants of sandwiches and single-use utensils in bins around campus. In 2020, this program diverted 14,931 pounds of food waste and organic material from the landfill. Further, our compost output quadrupled since the beginning of “COVID lunch,” owing to the tremendous efforts of our dining hall, maintenance, and cleaning staffs. Not only do we compost food scraps, but those teams have also sourced industrially compostable containers, utensils, napkins, and wrappers. In conjunction with the commitment to reusable takeaway lunch containers, the amount of trash we are not creating is visible to all the members of our school community every day. From green lunch containers to green spaces, our school landscape is another example of eco-friendly actions. In 2017, Upper School teacher Polly Linden and Middle School teacher Amy Emerson approached the Head of School, Dr. Balmer, about a school garden, and she
