After noticing a lack of sustainability efforts during lunch, Fiona Pearce (11) founded Friends of the Earth to address the issue by composting. 

 Students at Heritage are allowed to choose where they eat. Many, with teacher permission, choose to eat with their friends in their favorite classes. Since Friends of the Earth wants to bring compost to the cafeteria, they are putting bins in the classrooms with the most students at lunch. 

“At my old school we had a compost club in the cafeteria. I liked that we had the option to keep more waste out of the landfill, so when I transferred here and we didn’t have anything like that I thought it would be a good idea to bring composting to HHS,” Pearce said.

Students in Friends of the Earth will be getting community service hours for every meeting they go to and for all projects they participate in. Pearce keeps records of when each person goes so no one loses track. They sign in every meeting and they have all their information on Google Classroom. 

The Google Classroom is controlled by the sponsor, David Schlesinger, who teaches science. Pearce has also created a Remind for people in the club. She lets them know if they are having meetings, when meetings are, and any updates about the club. 

“Fiona Pearce came up to me one day with the interest of starting a club and asked if I would be willing to be her sponsor for a club, and I loved seeing her take such an initiative and being excited about compost so I happily accepted,” Schlesinger said. 

You can find signs of the club in some classrooms and around the school making a difference not only on school grounds but within the community as a whole. It may seem like it’s only making a small difference, but Pearce and her club feel confident that a little sustainability will go a long way.

Friends of the Earth meets after school on Thursdays in E110.

[Correction: In the print edition, Fiona Pearce’s name was misspelled in the lede.]