Students to Star at Green Vision Forum

Madison, NJ – March 9, 2020 – The Madison Environmental Commission is holding its third annual Green Vision Forum on Thursday, March 19 from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Madison Community Arts Center, 10 Kings Road. Once again, the stars of the evening will be students from Madison’s elementary, junior and high schools, along with college students from Drew University and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The students will present their ideas for a greener Madison to an audience that includes both parents and town officials—Mayor Robert H. Conley, members of the Borough Council, district administrators and members of the Board of Education

“We want to listen to student voices in Madison and see what we can do to take action,” said Mayor Conley. “At last year’s Green Vision Forum, students presented on the environmental hazards associated with plastic bags - and now we’ve enacted a plastic bag ban. Another presentation on plastic straws led to Madison’s Skip the Straw initiative during Restaurant Week,” continued Conley.

This year, Kirsten Wallenstein will join Renee Shalhoub of the Environmental Commission, who has chaired the Green Vision Forum since it first started three years ago, as her co-chair.

“I’m looking forward to hearing the kids’ ideas and gaining a deeper understanding of what environmental issues Madison cares about,” says Maureen Byrne, Borough Council liaison to the Environmental Commission. “It’s exciting to see this level of enthusiasm from our students and future leaders.”

For more details, please contact the Environmental Commission at MEC@rosenet.org. 

A PDF of the release can be found here. 

Pictured: Central Avenue School Green Team and Debbie Mantone, Special Education Teacher, are collecting plastic bottle caps to be recycled into park benches. As the students will report, the teams have sorted, cleaned, and weighed 350 pounds of plastic caps. It takes 200 pounds of plastic caps to make one park bench.