Needham, Wellesley Collaborate at Sustainability Summit

October 9, 2025
• Local sustainability advocates gathered for a brainstorming session at Babson College Wednesday in an effort to foster creativity, connection and real-world solutions.

When tasked with sharing their sustainability work, leaders and students across Needham and Wellesley got to work. By the time they sat back down, hundreds of Post-it notes covered two walls of white boards, cataloguing successes, potential opportunities and challenges.

The successes are plentiful: a bike share program, energy coaching, pollinator havens, decarbonization efforts. However, challenges abound, namely money and resources.

Then came time to tackle those problems, and together with more than 60 of their peers, they seemed apt to do so.

During the inaugural Greater Needham Wellesley Sustainability Summit — organized by staff of Babson College, Olin College and Wellesley College — participants coalesced around common problems and left with concrete plans to address them. In the coming months, they hope to create a formalized knowledge-sharing network, organize a tree planting bike fundraiser, visualize the impact of plastic bottle use and set goals for net-zero construction.

Nick Hill, a member of Green Needham and the town’s Climate Action Committee, said he was excited about “taking a regional approach to problem-solving.”

“I think one of the general areas [of discussion] is how to get people involved, and that’s a challenge that I think everybody in a nonprofit has. It was really more a sense of we’re not in this alone,” Hill said of the summit. “It gets the wheels turning.”

Needham attendees identified communication with the public on key issues as a challenge, but that seemed to be common across other local groups. Hill said it’s difficult to capture people’s attention, and often, sharing information feels like “preaching to the choir.”

Apart from creating detailed environmental plans, the summit centered on breaking down silos.

“We read each other’s newsletters, but that’s where it stops,” Quentin Prideaux, a member of Sustainable Wellesley, said to one group.

Gabby Queenan, Needham’s sustainability manager, mentioned her desire to meet with Wellesley staff to tackle sustainability issues together. Skip the Stuff, an initiative both towns pursued around the same time, was one example of such an opportunity.

Getting people into a room is the first step, organizer and Babson Director of Sustainability and Campus Utilization Leila Lamoureux said. Inside Babson College’s Olin Hall, representatives from schools, towns and organizations sparked ideas and conversations that she hopes lead to a brighter, more green future.

“We just redid our strategy over this past year for sustainability, so the past year has been really inward facing,” Lamoureux said. “Now that we have a really good grasp on that, and we know who we are and what we are in terms of sustainability, moving that forward into some actionable items is the next natural step for us. And so having these resources and learning about the other organizations and what they can do is just amazing.”

Green Needham member Kathy Raiz talked plastic bottles, a topic with which she’s quite familiar. Given what they consider prolific plastic bottle use at town athletic fields, Raiz and her cohort brought the effort to renewed focus. They aim to collect data on plastic bottles consumed and recycled, specifically at sporting events, and visualize it in order to spread awareness of their use.

Raiz’s excitement was palpable.

“It reenergizes you,” she said to her group about the summit. “I’m not the only one staying up at night thinking about this. Other people care.”

On the more local level, Needham representatives view the community swap shop, as well as Pollard Middle School, as untapped opportunities for sustainability. Hill noted the Climate Action Committee’s goal to better integrate sustainability goals into the plans to redevelop Pollard.

An existing challenge in Needham is government support for initiatives and a fear of pushback, according to one Post-it note. Attendees suggested pursuing a number of other potential projects, including the creation of a solar array at Babson, transforming a lawn into a honeybee haven and installing heat pumps into Wellesley homes.

The theme of the summit was clear: To make an impact, you have to come together.

“Sustainability is only really successful when you collaborate with like-minded people from other institutions and other programs,” said Jenn Garvin, energy and sustainability manager at Wellesley College and an event organizer. “There’s a variety of ways you can do sustainability goals, and it’s nice to not reinvent the wheel and collaborate and have shared resources.”