Westtown’s award-winning stewardship and sustainability initiatives can be traced back more than a quarter of a millennia. From the school’s early land preservation and natural resource conservation, to sustainable infrastructure, waste reduction, and experiential learning, Westtown leads by example and motivates students to be stewards of their world and its resources. As a result of these innovations and sustainable practices, Westtown School has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor as Green Ribbon School.

These ideals are central to the mission and vision of the school and are evident in how we design academic, social, and residential curricula, how we make decisions, and in how we relate to and nurture our students. Students are called upon to discover their own voices and interests. Because we are guided by Quaker principles, we are committed to education that focuses on:

Pursue carbon neutrality;
Pursue zero waste;
Promote and support human and ecosystem health through sustainable transportation;
Infuse sustainability into our program and community;
Increase community awareness of the connectedness between health, well-being, and sustainability;
Protect, restore, and ensure the sustainable use of Westtown’s natural resources; and
Enhance Westtown’s ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from climate related impacts.

READ OUR FIVE-YEAR SUSTAINABILITY PLAN

Sustainability Highlights

Arial image of the eight-acre solar array

Outside of the LEED Gold Science Building

Outside of the LEED Silver equivalent Center for the Living Arts

Westtown’s campus is a sustainable, living laboratory that enables faculty and students to explore natural, green space with biodiverse ecosystems and wildlife, as well as state-of-the-art facilities and renewable energy infrastructure.

Operations and Infrastructure

2.0 MW, eight-acre solar farm supplies over 90% of the campus’s electricity.
The Athletic Center is serviced by a solar array with active monitoring.
Our LEED Gold Science Building contains a solar hot water system and geothermal heating and cooling system.
The Center for the Living Arts is LEED Silver equivalent
Two dormitories—Balderston Commons and Guerster House—and seven faculty homes are geothermally heated and cooled and are Energy Star Certified.
Westtown’s Dining Room is a certified Four-Star Green Restaurant.
There are three electric vehicle charging stations on campus, with a total of eight charging plugs.

Environment and Climate

Our 600-acre campus boasts meadows, trails, a mature forest, a lake, wetlands, streams and waterways, and farmland.
Ten acres of the campus is designated as an arboretum.
49.13 acres of the northern campus were added to Pennsylvania’s Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP).The program promotes best practices in supporting water quality, soil erosion prevention, and creating sustainable wildlife habitats. Westtown has begun restorative efforts by replanting the lands with native grasses.
Lower School Farm, which is a Three Sisters Garden that follows the Indigenous method of companion planting, contains plants, chickens, and composting equipment;
The organic mini-farm, located by the South Entrance to the school near the athletic fields, is a one-acre plot of farmland operated by Westtown’s sustainable agriculture teacher and student farm managers.
The Greenhouse is used by faculty to teach students about scientific experiments with plants and grows food for the Dining Room.
The recently dredged and reconstructed dam that protects the campus and its neighbors from the impacts of severe flooding.
Motus tower on the rooftop of Main Building is an international, collaborative radio-telemetry network that uses tiny, lightweight transmitters (nanotags) attached to birds (and bats/insects) to track their movements and migration patterns using a network of automated receiver towers;
An Eagle cam on campus live streaming 24/7 the habitat of a bald eagle that lives on campus;

Education and Health

Outdoor Education
Westtown’s Outdoor Education Program weaves academic curriculum and self-discovery into real-life experiences for students from pre-K-12 through place-based and nature-based teaching. From educating students about outdoor survival skills, to extracting sap from maple trees, to canoeing and identifying plants and organisms while hiking through rugged terrain, teachers guide students to listen “to nature’s profound rhythms.” Director of Outdoor Education Chris Henwood-Costa shares, “This work—connecting with the land, exploring the outdoors, and spending intentional time in nature—is all a vehicle for self-discovery,” she says. “Who am I? How do I engage with people and how do I engage with this land? Am I taking care of myself? What is my responsibility?”

Upper School Deep-Dive Certificate in Sustainability Leadership
The Deep-Dive Certificate in Sustainability Leadership is an interdisciplinary action-based Upper School program that allows students to envision solutions to real challenges. The program consists of required course work in prescribed areas, a project in at least four other classes over the junior and senior years on a sustainability topic, an off-campus immersion experience, and an extracurricular opportunity on campus. The program concludes with a capstone project that demonstrates action-based learning and ties all of the certificate experiences into a cogent, reflective whole. Each spring, students present their capstone projects to the school community.

Global Sustainability Leadership
In 2024 and 2025, Westtown developed a signature international program that focused on climate action with a cohort of students traveling to the 29th annual United Nations (UN) Conference of Parties (COP) Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan (2024), and Belem, Brazil (2025). The purpose was to provide students a unique perspective on global climate policy through the lens of the United Nations processes, providing an authentic opportunity to address real-world challenges.