Needham, Wellesley to Join Forces Toward Green Future

November 2, 2026
• While rivals on the football field, the two towns will come together for Babson College’s second sustainability summit.

For the sustainability-minded, Babson College seemed like the place to be last October.

During the inaugural Greater Needham-Wellesley Sustainability Summit, participants buzzed with opportunities for potential collaboration. They formed group chats, ideated and stuck many a Post-It note to the walls around the meeting room.

Despite the enthusiasm, some of those projects didn’t stick.

“I was impressed with how many groups are working on similar initiatives and seeking ways to collaborate,” Wellesley Natural Resources Commission Director Brandon Schmitt wrote in an email. “Our small group did propose a college student led tree planting initiative, but that did not materialize.”

Nick Hill, chair of Needham’s Climate Action Committee and a summit co-organizer, said their mission is to strengthen ties within sustainability spaces and recognize “that we are an ecosystem.” Those who attend, he hopes, come away with a couple new contacts and potential action items.

“I think what we’re doing is trying to, rather than create projects, we’re trying to integrate sustainability activities among the towns of Needham, Wellesley, Wellesley College, Babson, Olin and Mass Bay Community College,” Hill said.

The summit aims to gather town leaders as well as organizations like Green Needham, Sustainable Wellesley and Needham High School’s Environmental Action Club. This time around, organizers are trying to expand their audience, reaching out to groups with an interest in sustainability but also those that perhaps don’t make it a priority.

This year’s summit takes place Friday, Nov. 6.

As of Monday, 90 people have signed up for the five-hour, public-private event. The summit will feature keynote speakers, breakout sessions and concurrent talks on a range of issues. The theme is “Rooted Together: Ecology • Community • Resilience.”

At Babson last spring, staff planted a Miyawaki forest, a cluster of self-sustaining native plants with several ecological benefits. The college also boasts bee hives and is seeking a grant to install an outdoor classroom for both college students and Needham Public Schools students alike.

Leila Lamoureux, the director of sustainability and campus utilization at Babson, said the school’s entrepreneurial mindset and environmentalism are linked.

“Sustainability is really important to our students, and it’s a passion,” Lamoureux said. “We talk about creating economic value, but also social value, and these kids really care when they come in, and they want to create value. It’s not just about money for them. It’s important that we as educators and as the college weave that into their curriculum.”

Gearing up for Friday, Schmitt looks forward to hearing more about the Miyawaki forest and Babson’s pollinator project. The Wellesley NRC — who cares for the town’s parks and conservation properties — is eyeing its third year of a Habit to Habitat project that involves “collecting seeds from our new pollinator habitat specifically designed to support at-risk pollinators in the community,” Schmitt wrote.

Connecting with partners outside of Wellesley can prove useful, he added.

“Communication is always helpful,” he wrote, “and where we can learn/borrow from [others’] experience, it reduces redundancy and duplication of effort.”

Hill, who is also on Green Needham’s steering committee and works as a sustainability consultant, said part of the goal is “to bring more stakeholders together.” Green Needham is the advocacy group behind the town’s plastic bag restrictions, map of working water fountains and recent climate change demonstration.

Installing solar panels, moving toward electricity aggregation and other green efforts are also top of mind for the organization, Hill said.

With students at the high school and college level planning to attend, Lamoureux said it’s an opportunity to grow sustainability efforts across generations.

“It’s like-minded people who care about sustainability,” she said.

Faced with grave, possibly existential environmental threats, Hill said the summit could create “a network of optimism.”

Hill is, admittedly, not a green thumb, but he views Friday’s event almost like a garden.

“It’s a long haul, and maybe the thing about the summit is it’s a time to find community and joy, even as we’re fighting something,” he said. “And it’s a hard thing to remember, especially in early November when it’s dark and gray, but there are people doing things, and hopefully we’ll feed that and create this little garden that I [can’t] kill.”