Lindsey Maiuri, with the help of her science teacher, Deb Cote, brought biodegradable lunch trays to Grafton High School.
Photo credit: Jeremy Rice

GRAFTON, Mass. - Lindsey Maiuri believes greener is better, and not just because she's a senior at Grafton High School.

Maiuri is a big proponent of making her school and her hometown more environmentally friendly.

After two years of taking environmental science classes with Deb Cote, Maiuri wanted more, but at GHS there were no more classes in that field in which to enroll.

Maiuri decided instead to take an independent study, under the supervision of Mrs. Cote, and began the "Greening Up Grafton" blog on the school's website. You can find the blog here.

"We wanted to do something big that would help out the school. The first thing we thought was to get rid of the Styrofoam lunch trays, because they're horrible."

Maiuri made it her goal to have the old Styrofoam trays that will last millenia in landfills replaced with biodegradable trays that can be composted with food waste.

She is also heading up the cause of getting her fellow students to sort their garbage, with gray bins for trash, blue bins for recyclables like bottles, cans and paper, and green bins for biodegradable trash.

Her goal for the spring semester is to make composting a regular part of daily life at GHS. Tons of food waste has simply gotten tossed with the garbage (literally) for years. Maiuri wants to change that so that food waste can be composted and used to build a garden on the school premises.

"We needed a name for the project, and I picked 'Greening Up Grafton' as the name because I thought it was kind of catchy," said Maiuri.

Maiuri plans to attend New England Tech after graduation and study interior design. She plans on applying her "going green" know-how to learn how to design more environmentally friendly and energy efficient homes.

"She's so motivated to get things done," said Cote. "I'm so excited that it will continue. I think some kids care more than we give them credit for. They just don't know where to go with it."

What began as an independent study is now a program that will be carried on after Maiuri graduates and moves on to new things at NE Tech.

For now, Lindsey Maiuri will be Greening Up Grafton for a few more months.