NewCanaanite.com recently received the following letter. Send letters to editor@newcanaanite.com to have them published here.
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At Planet New Canaan, we love celebrating the people and organizations in our community who are finding meaningful ways to make New Canaan a greener place to live. This year, we’re especially excited to recognize two very deserving 2026 Green Heroes: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and South School Principal Matt Kascak.
St. Mark’s leads by example in so many ways. Its annual May Fair gives thousands of household items a second life, keeping pounds of waste out of the waste stream, while food served at the fair and throughout the year is composted. The church has also installed solar panels and energy-efficient lighting, maintains a Gospel Garden that provides fresh produce to the New Canaan Food Pantry and Person to Person, and recently transformed an area overrun with invasive plants into a vibrant pollinator garden. At South School, Matt Kascak has made sustainability part of everyday life. Working with students, parents, staff and Planet New Canaan, he helped launch a school-wide composting program that diverted more than 47,000 pounds of food scraps from the landfill through the end of the 2025/2026 school year. These are the kinds of efforts that show how individual leadership and community participation can add up to real change.
We’ll be celebrating St. Mark’s and Matt at Planet New Canaan’s 2026 Green Gala on Thursday, Oct. 1, at the Carriage Barn Arts Center at Waveny. It will be a casual, fun evening with great food, cocktails and live music. We will also have a silent auction featuring handmade items and local experiences that tie into our sustainability mission. We hope you’ll join us to raise a glass to our Green Heroes and to everyone in New Canaan who is doing their part to create a healthier, more sustainable community.