Wayland Town Crier 7/25/12: Towns go green to save green. The green movement is good for the environment, good for public relations and, for many area towns, much easier on the wallet. A review of data collected by the state shows that recycling rates are on the rise in MetroWest and the Milford area, in part a reflection of many towns’ decisions to make recycling easier and more cost effective for residents. Wayland led the pack in MetroWest with a 49 percent recycling rate in 2010, and according to its 2011 Annual Town Report, residents recycled more than they threw out in fiscal 2011, with 1,115 tons recycled and 1,059 tons disposed of.

Wayland Town Crier 4/12/12: Expanded state program gives solar opportunity to four towns. Homeowners and businesses in four area towns can now get solar panels installed more cheaply, thanks to a newly expanded state program. That program, Solarize Massachusetts, includes Hopkinton, Wayland, Sudbury, Mendon and 13 other towns, an expansion announced by the state yesterday at Hopkinton Town Hall.

Wayland Patch 3/28/12: Stop & Shop Proposes Wind Turbines, LED Lights and More. Stop & Shop wants to bring more than groceries to Wayland. Electric car charging stations, LED parking lot lights, solar panels and wind turbines were part of a Stop & Shop presentation Tuesday night during a Wayland Planning Board meeting. The green initiatives are part of Stop & Shop’s efforts to earn LEED certification for the Wayland store.

Because Wayland is a Green Community, the town has a chance to be part of Solarize Massachusetts, a program sponsored by the Massachusetts Clean Energy…

Wayland Patch 8/14/11: Creating Treasure from Trash: Eco-Art in Wayland. Of course you’ve heard that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But what if one man’s trash could be another man’s artistic creation, which could then be a decorative treasure in your home? It’s happening right in Wayland, and if Dan Balter and Peter Vazquez get their way, the items you take to the Wayland Transfer Station just might reappear in your home as repurposed and re-imagined pieces of art.

CNN Money 7/7/11: An eco-friendly lawn you don't have to mow1. It's hard to imagine anything more innocuous than a lush suburban lawn. That's what 63-year-old entrepreneur Jackson Madnick used to think — until a golf course killed his cat. His cat, Kitty, sickened and died 14 years ago. A groundskeeper at the nearby links told Madnick that many local animals had been dying off from chemicals used to treat the grass there. That set Madnick off on a mission to find a grass seed that grew easily without toxic chemicals. He spent nearly a decade potting and growing more than 70 different grasses on the deck behind his home in Wayland, Mass. Finally, he got results: a slow-growing, drought-resistant blend of seven grasses that needs no chemical fertilizers, little mowing and relatively no water. He named the blend Pearl's Premium, in honor of his environmentalist mother.

Wayland Town Crier 7/1/11: Green Team conducts trash audit at Claypit Hill School. On June 14, the second-graders at Claypit Hill School filed into the lunchroom expecting something different. Their teachers had prepared them for an unusual approach, just that day, to trash. That one lunch session, out of five at the school, was to conduct an experiment – an audit of what gets trashed and recycled. The effort was led by the Wayland Green Team under the direction of Molly Faulkner. This waste audit was only one step in an ambitious Green Team project called Composting and School Gardens. The goal is to compost, on site, all organic waste from lunchrooms, kitchens and snacks at all Wayland schools. Gone were the usual bins – the spill bucket for milk, the recycling bin for milk cartons, and the bin for everything else, from plastic knives to food leftovers to the polystyrene trays that the lunches are served on. Just for that day, they were replaced with two line-ups of four labeled bins, each manned by two Green Team members.