The Green Team

A modest, unassuming mother of two, Tania Herbert has revolutionized the way the Paideia School thinks about waste. As head of recycling for the Green Team, a 15-year-old parent volunteer group dedicated to environmental issues, Herbert spearheaded the effort to make Paideia’s annual pre-Thanksgiving feast eco-friendly. In past years, the feast had generated 50-75 bags of garbage. Only seven bags of garbage were produced at this past year’s feast.

To eliminate so much waste, Herbert persuaded the school to purchase compostable products: plates made of bagasse, a sugarcane fiber; cups made of corn and utensils made of potato starch. She bought napkins made from 99.9 percent recycled paper and trash bags that were compostable. She encouraged students to bring food in recyclable or reusable containers and set up stations where guests recycled plastic containers and paper bags and composted everything else.

She then arranged to have the compostables taken to a local composting facility, and the corrugated cardboard protecting the gym floor was recycled by Emory University.

Her goal, in keeping with the Green Team’s mission, was to minimize the negative environmental impact of the feast. In addition to helping make the school’s events more environmentally friendly, the Green Team runs the school’s recycling program, organizes an Earth Day celebration, and sponsors lectures and workshops to educate the community on environmental issues.

The group sponsors an annual “Reuse a Shoe” program (set for April 22 this year) in which students bring in old running shoes whose parts will be used to make basketball courts and playgrounds. Taking the concept of “reuse, reduce and recycle” even further, Herbert and Sarah O’Leary, co-chairs of the Green Team, have added another component to the “Reuse a Shoe” program. Shoes that are in good condition are sorted, cleaned, re-laced and donated to local refugee organizations. Used soccer cleats and equipment are also collected and given to refugee soccer teams.

As part of these activities, the Green Team leaders provide learning opportunities for students. Before the feast, they organized a panel discussion on recycling and composting and distributed information about the products used. On “Reuse a Shoe” day, students conduct the sorting, cleaning, and re-lacing. Herbert said, “The concept of reducing waste is becoming more real for the students.”

As chair of the student-led Green Team, Philip Bene, a Paideia senior, works closely with Herbert. “Tania is the main bridge between the student and parent Green Teams,” he said. “She makes them work in concert. She sees something that needs to be done, puts the time into it, and gets it done.”

Judy Schwarz, director of parent involvement at Paideia, agreed. “We have been doing the feast since the school began and have never thought about the waste we generated,” she said. “Tania took the initiative to change that. She is an amazing worker who has given herself to making this world a greener place for us and our children.”