Saugus High activists honored – Students receive SAVE’s first Environmental Recognition Award at group’s 52nd annual meeting and dinner

  (Editor’s Note: The following story was based in part on a press release issued this week by the Saugus Action Volunteers for The Environment [SAVE] and the news archives of The Saugus Advocate.)

It was about 16 months ago when Isabella Vasi and Zenera Shahu – friends and sophomore students at the Saugus Middle-High School – caught the attention of local ecologists by creating an environmental club for fellow students. The two students then demonstrated a commitment to their declared cause by filling up several trash bags of litter from the school parking lot area during the second annual cleanup by Saugus Action Volunteers for the Environment (SAVE).

Last week (June 25), the co-presidents of the Saugus Middle-High School Environmental Club were guests of honor at the Grill House restaurant during SAVE’s 52nd Annual Meeting and Dinner. They received SAVE’s first Environmental Recognition Award, honored for establishing the school environmental club while continuing to work towards creating goals to promote environmental awareness in both their school and the community.

“The club was formed on a whim really, we had always been passionate about community service and the environment and one day I just woke up in the middle of the night and texted Zenera right away that we should start an environmental club,” Isabella wrote in a letter to SAVE Co-President Ann Devlin.

“We had been taking AP Environmental science at that time. So that influenced us too and we instantly had hundreds of ideas of what to do. Our main goals so far have been to get more kids involved in helping the environment, especially in our community, start a recycling program at school and push our school towards sustainable products. So far we have built a community garden, had successful fundraisers for our club like our physical media sale which educated people about the importance of second-hand items and not contributing to landfills,” she said.

Isabella and Zenera recently completed their junior year and have big ambitions for the club when they return for their senior year.

“We were pretty impressed that they got the environmental club started,” Devlin told The Saugus Advocate this week.

“They told me that they were working on a greenhouse garden to house native plants that they would make open to the public and are also working on recycling projects at their school,” said Devlin, who quipped that she hopes to see both Isabella and Zenera as future SAVE members.

SAVE, a nonprofit organization, has dedicated its efforts to promoting a better quality of life in Saugus through environmental concern and action since 1973.

Co-President Stephanie Shalkoski opened the evening by recognizing several town officials in attendance, including SAVE members who serve on Town Meeting and the Board of Selectmen. She went on to highlight a number of SAVE-sponsored events held over the past year, emphasizing how they not only benefited the community but also helped educate residents about the important role each of us plays in protecting the environment. She reminded the audience that even the smallest actions can make a meaningful difference. Stephanie concluded by reminding everyone that several other SAVE-sponsored, educational events will be held during the remainder of the year, including a bird/owl show at Breakheart’s Fall Festival in September and an Environmental Candidate’s Night in October.

Guest speaker Andrea Lacroix, who is affiliated with Beyond Plastics, a national organization dedicated to ending plastic pollution, captivated the audience with eye-opening facts about the widespread use and dangers of plastics. She explained that plastics are made from thousands of chemicals, and the safety of at least 50% of those chemicals remains unknown. Lacroix emphasized that most plastic can never be truly recycled, and highlighted how single-use bags are particularly problematic, as they jam recycling machinery and cannot be processed. Fortunately, Saugus bans the use of single-use plastic bags (and polystyrene food containers), since Town Meeting passed the SAVE-sponsored articles, and the bylaws went into effect in 2020.

More concerning was her point that generations born in recent decades have never known a world without plastic and that we are all now carrying plastic in our bodies. Despite this, major corporations continue to ramp up plastic production, leading to even greater waste. One of Lacroix’s key takeaways: “Skip the stuff” is a simple but powerful call to reduce plastic use in our daily lives.

In all, everyone fully enjoyed the food, the camaraderie, the information shared by the speaker and the raffle prizes.

“We also want to thank our community partners for helping us make this event so successful: Saugus Garden Club, Trader Joe’s, Stop & Shop, Northeast Nursery, Hammersmith Restaurant, Banana Splitz, Little Brook Garden Center, Trinity Realty-Saugus, Timeless Life Treasurers-Salem, and Chickadee Company.

“Anyone wishing to find out more information about SAVE, please visit our Facebook page at http://www.saugussave.com or bookmark SAVES’s webpage at http://www.saugussave.org”