The Bromfield School
As schools across Massachusetts look for meaningful ways to engage students in climate action, the Bromfield School stands out for how deeply it integrates learning, leadership, and real-world impact.
The Bromfield School, located in Harvard, Massachusetts, has prioritized climate action through its cafeteria operations, classroom teachings, and overall school values.
Bromfield School collects leftover food scraps from the cafeteria to send to a local farm for animal feed. For long-term success, students created a training video to show classmates how to run the program smoothly after current leaders graduate.
Set Up Snapshot
- 5-gallon buckets with screw-top lids
- Buckets are open all day for collection
- Custodians move buckets from the cafeteria to designated outdoor location
- Farmer picks up, empties, cleans, and returns buckets to the school
- 6+ year partnerships with local farms
- Improving systems with signage and peer monitoring
In addition to food waste diversion, Bromfield School started a collection program to increase battery, plastic bag, and pen and marker recycling.
Growing a Culture of Climate Action
High school and middle school students at Bromfield created and led a project to teach 5th graders about climate change. The result? A jigsaw climate change evidence lesson/group project that used various data sets from the NASA Climate Time Machine.
2025 was the school’s second year running this collaborative, cross-grade project. Bromfield hopes to expand it into another lesson for 6th-grade students, which will center around lowering their carbon footprint.
This year, three Bromfield students attended the Massachusetts Community Climate Leaders Conference at Bentley University in Waltham. The conference serves to engage community leaders and activists in climate conversations. Bromfield’s students spoke at the conference and had the opportunity to connect with other climate leaders in their community.
Bromfield School takes climate action seriously. We can’t wait to see what initiatives the school starts next!
