St. Mary’s Recognizes Sustainability Award Winners
The 2023 St. Mary’s County Sustainability Award winners have been announced.
In the School Category, the winner was Father Andrew White School. Honorable mention went to Elms Environmental Education Center and Maryland Master Naturalist Program.
In the Nonprofit Category, the winner was Southern Maryland Resource Conservation & Development. St. Mary’s River Watershed Association earned an honorable mention.
The Sustainability Awards recognize outstanding students, restaurants, businesses, nonprofits, and farms in St. Mary’s County for their environmental stewardship, resource conservation, innovative best practices, and pollution prevention efforts. All nominees for the 2023 calendar year demonstrated commitment to improving local environmental impacts.
Father Andrew White, S.J. School in Leonardtown began a food waste program midway through last school year, in late winter to spring 2023. Victoria Rutherford manages the school’s kitchen, serving up to 200 children and staff each day. When she noticed food being discarded due to absences, she partnered with the school nurse, a volunteer at Summerseat Farm, to devise and implement a plan to reduce food waste.
They collected leftover or spoiled food appropriate for the farm animals to eat, averaging 25 pounds of food per week. FAW hopes to further expand this program to engage elementary students in learning about food waste and separating their cafeteria waste on their own.
“The kitchen now throws away very little actual food,” Ms. Rutherford said. “Kitchen waste is relegated to packaging.” Composting and keeping food waste out of the landfill waste stream is economical and a priority project of the St. Mary’s Commission on the Environment.
In 2023, Southern Maryland RC&D launched several educational programs. RC&D’s Sunday Eco-School, held at the Barns at New Market in Mechanicsville, was designed to provide free environmental education for all ages. Topics in the first year included the importance of wetlands, the history of agriculture in Southern Maryland, native plants, Maryland trees, and soil health.
The lessons were valuable for home-schooled kids who have fewer opportunities for environmental education. RC&D also started a virtual seminar series, four in total but two taking place in 2023. These well-attended lectures were presented by experts in the field and generated lots of good questions and discussion.
Additionally, RC&D’s program director for land conservation served as an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland during the spring and fall semesters, teaching second- and third-year students about careers in the environmental and conservation fields. RC&D also applied for and became a Chesapeake Conservation and Climate Corps host site in 2023.
This allows RC&D to mentor a young adult to obtain gainful employment in the environmental field. The mentorship officially began in August 2023 and will continue until August 2024.
RC&D has also continued to help implement Maryland’s Rural Legacy Program, which conserves rural land throughout the state. In 2023, RC&D was awarded $1,461,697 in Rural Legacy grant funding. Three new conservation easements went to settlement in 2023, and RC&D has continued to monitor the other 27 conservation easements it holds under this program.
Selection of the Sustainability Award winners was based on outstanding demonstrated efforts to improve the environment and for initiatives and projects exceeding business norms and requirements.
For more information on the Commission on the Environment, visit the county’s website.
