How Sustainability and Social Justice Intersect at St. Patrick’s

The Sustainability Program at St. Patrick’s has grown in the past several years to become an even more important part of our shared lives here thanks to the hard work of a group of dedicated environmentalists, an Environmental Action Team composed of students, parents, faculty, and staff, and members of the Board of Trustees. Director of Sustainability and early-childhood science teacher Sam Mason established this team as part of a larger effort to bring together members of our diverse community to have a positive impact on our Earth’s natural environment.

One of this group’s first initiatives was to work towards an EcoSchools USA certification. Together, we reduced consumption and waste, curbed energy use, and focused on sustainable food and healthy living. Through this process, St. Patrick’s first earned an Eco-Schools Bronze Award, followed by an EcoSchools Silver Award shortly thereafter. St. Patrick’s has become only the fifth school in Washington, D.C. to achieve this Silver Award and is well on its way to a
Green Flag Award! This progress reflects our curriculum integration, community engagement, and best practices within our facilities department. The enthusiasm and effort are evident throughout the school, including Grade 1’s exciting farm-to-table unit, Grade 5’s work with waste reduction, and our move to 100% LED lighting.

To engage students in Kindergarten to Grade 5 in discussions around farm-to-table sustainability, we chose Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table as a Book-of-the Month last spring. Farmer Will is the true story of a basketball-player-turned-farmer who begins a city farm in Milwaukee. Farmer Will “noticed that fresh vegetables were as scarce in the city as trout in the desert. He believed everyone, everywhere has a right to good food.” The soil in the city was poor, so he turned garbage into compost with the help of the neighborhood children who learned all about worms, particularly red wigglers. He made his life’s work traveling around the country and world to show people how to be farmers in the city. Even a St. Patrick’s Kindergarten class can understand environmental justice as the idea that everyone deserves to live on a clean Earth and start to understand that not everyone experiences the same environment.

The Environmental Action Team has been, and will continue to be, in communication with our own Faculty and Staff Equity Committee to ensure that we explore every possible opportunity to use the new Garden & Outdoor Learning Space to educate ourselves and our students about how we can help promote food justice. It is imperative at St. Patrick’s that our students develop the skills necessary to be actively engaged and to thrive in an interconnected world, to understand other perspectives, to address bias, to oppose prejudice, and to promote justice. Environmental sustainability is an issue that affects us all, but the impact is greater, or more immediate, for those in poorer, underserved communities; those without the resources to mitigate the problems. Communities that face food injustice are those that suffer multiple systems of oppression, such as poverty, racism, and under-funded educational systems. When certain groups are being disproportionately affected by any issue, it becomes a civil rights issue. The rights for our planet need to also be rights for people. The interconnected world referenced in our Mission Statement for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion urges us to have these conversations around justice and sustainability in the same room at the same time.

The Equity Committee wants our students to be aware that injustice in our society and environmental concerns are, in fact, intersecting areas where socioeconomically and historically disadvantaged groups continue to suffer disproportionately. It is essential to consider sustainability as a subject that addresses multiple interconnected human issues such as racial justice, gender equality, distribution of wealth, food security, wellness, and service. Sustainability brings together quality-of-life issues including food and water, waste, overuse, individual and public health, and weather extremes, to name a few. 

St. Patrick’s has made a commitment to reduce our food waste and help the surrounding community through sustainable practices and donations. The average lifespan in the District can vary up to 17 years. A major contributor to this reality is insufficient access to food, particularly quality food. The United Nation’s second sustainable development goal is also food-related, as 821 million people worldwide are malnourished. St. Patrick’s has different programs to help support those individuals in need of food in the District and to limit food waste. The first is the Salvation Army’s Grate Patrol, a longtime partnership that delivers food to those who are hungry and without homes in our city. The second is our food donations program, in which we teamed up with US Food Rescue and Campus Kitchen to take our uneaten food and freeze it. It is then taken to Campus Kitchen, where Chef Anthony helps to distribute it to those in need.
To further our work in environmental justice and food advocacy, the Equity Committee, and Environmental Action Team teamed up with D.C. Greens, whose founder and executive director Lauren Schweder Biel spoke with parents about their
mission and leadership in food access, policy, and education. The conversation was then moved to our Design Lab as Sarah Holway, the Education Director at D.C. Greens, helped our Grade 5 team plan a potential garden and discuss what it really means to have access to healthy food.

There is a wide net of activity that encompasses environmental sustainability, and we all come to see the importance of it through our different areas of interest and passion. Some people hate the idea of waste, so recycling can ease the burden on our ecosystem. The human toll of climate change can be seen in health concerns, labor issues, food insecurity, and more. The Sustainability and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion programs will continue to collaborate on ways to make for a healthier, more just community.