LYNN — St. Mary’s High School was selected by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) as one of the top eight grand prize winners for the Green Team Environmental Leadership award. 

The St. Mary’s High School Green Team, led by Stacy Drector, focused on ways to create sustainable reuse at the high school. The group created multiple reuse and donation initiatives at the school, which included sneaker drives and contributions to the Lynn Community Fridge. 

The St. Mary’s Green Team made huge efforts in creating educational posters to help encourage their classmates to be more aware of the environment and their own sustainable practices. The team also met with Vanguard Renewables, a company that focuses on helping American businesses and farms with sustainable waste management and clean energy solutions. Here, the team learned about anaerobic digestion solutions and investigated how their school may be able to implement stronger ways to prevent and reduce waste. 

The Green Team is a statewide program sponsored by the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) and MassDEP that works to educate children in PK-12 grade on the importance of environmental knowledge and giving children the space to experiment with the different ways that sustainability can be achieved. 

For more than 20 years, the program has worked with Massachusetts students to reduce pollution and to protect the environment. In just the 2025-26 school year alone, 426 Green Teams from 402 schools engaged 67,856 students. 75 other Green Teams across Massachusetts were awarded for their efforts, as well as an additional 24 schools that went above and beyond in their efforts with sustainability projects. 

Educators in Massachusetts who are interested in registering their classes for the upcoming 2026-27 school year should visit the Green Team website.