Student Sustainability Initiative Highlights

By Emily Sun ’26
NMH Ecoleader  

Sustainability on the NMH campus extends beyond the classroom and branches through every sparkle of curiosity and meticulous attention to the world around them. From small observations, curiosity can turn into experimentation, and simple ideas can grow into real initiatives. 

This year, several NMH students have been doing exactly that, testing solutions, constructing projects, and finding new ways to make campus life more sustainable. Some of these efforts have happened in science labs, others in dorm common rooms, and some through creativity and entrepreneurship. Together, these students demonstrate the potential for individual initiatives to turn ordinary observations into meaningful action. 

Founded by Seneca Smith ’27, Senny’s Sweets is a student-run business for handmade maple sweets, inspired by her early experience as a young entrepreneur and her family’s maple sugaring at home. Using her own recipe, she creates products like maple caramel apples and a variety of flavored caramels, often selling at local festivals and taking custom orders during holidays. 

“I strive to make everything I do sustainable,” Seneca said. With sustainability built into the core of her process, Seneca locally sources almost all of her ingredients, with maple syrup from her own home and dairy and apples from nearby New England farms. Her packaging is also sustainable, with each caramel wrapped in compostable parchment paper. By minimizing transportation and prioritizing local sourcing, she keeps her production scale intentionally small to reduce environmental impact. 

Looking ahead, Seneca expresses both hopes to continue growing her business and expanding into shipping, and concerns about the potential impacts of climate change on local maple tree production. 

Another sustainability initiative this year took place in the science lab. Early this school year, as part of her capstone project, Emily Sun ’26 conducted an environmental field study investigating how the discharge of the NMH wastewater treatment plant influences the water quality of the receiving Connecticut River. Through 10 rounds of on-site sampling and lab experimentation, she found notable increases in nutrients and shifts in water chemistry near the discharge point, with effects diminishing further downstream. 

“One interesting scientific guess that emerged from this is the possible correlation between the campus use of phosphate-containing laundry detergents and exaggerated phosphate levels in the wastewater discharge,” Emily said. Because phosphate compounds are often added to detergents to help with the cleaning performance, these chemicals can enter the wastewater systems after washing cycles. “While further research would be needed to confirm this relationship, these findings suggest a simple potential solution to reduce our environmental footprint,” she adds, “which is to encourage the transition towards phosphate-free laundry detergents on campus.” 

Her project was publicly presented on campus in December and will be presented at the Connecticut River Environmental Summit at Wesleyan University in May. She looks forward to continuing exploring such topics and research opportunities as she heads into college. 

In Wallace Hall, two students, Katie Hu ’27 and Ysabelle Sun ’28, recently introduced a collaborative dorm-based compost system. The idea started with a common dorm problem, which is that leftover food often ended up in the bathroom and common room trash bins, creating unpleasant odors and eventually being sent to the landfill. “Since our school has a robust compost system for the dining hall, Katie and I thought it would be a good idea to add our dorm food waste into the system instead of [throwing it] out,” Ysabelle suggested. 

Inside the dorm, students would dispose of food waste in a dedicated bin equipped with a smell-proof lid and compostable bags. Each evening, the students assigned to kitchen duty would seal the bags and bring them outside to a larger bin located near the dorm; then, every other week, the collected food waste would be transported to the compost bins behind the dining hall. This system keeps odors under control while ensuring food waste is regularly removed and properly composted. “The system turned out to be quite successful,” Katie reflected, “[since launching the initiative], we have collected approximately 33 kilograms of food waste.” 

In the future, Katie and Ysabelle hope to inspire beyond Wallace, expanding dorm composting across campus and ensuring that more food waste gets diverted to the school’s existing compost system. 

This article was reprinted with permission from the February/March Northfield Mount Hermon Ecoleaders' Newsletter. Read past issue of the newsletter, and follow the Ecoleaders on Instagram @nmhecoleaders.