Taylor C.
"I am not only thinking about the environment from the perspective of a college student or business owner, but also as a mother who wants my daughter and the children in my care to grow up understanding and appreciating the natural world around them."
A licensed childcare provider and mom in Central Maine, Taylor is proving that environmental change doesn’t have to start big. Sometimes it starts with a compost bin and a group of toddlers.
Taylor wasn’t looking to change the world all at once. She was looking to change her daycare.
As the owner of Busy Bee’s Daycare, Taylor had spent years caring for young children with intention and love. When she started her program at Unity Environmental University, she began to see her business through a new lens, one that connected sustainability, environmental science, and everyday decision-making in ways she hadn’t considered before.
“Unity helped me realize that sustainability does not have to exist only in large organizations or environmental careers,” she says. “I could build it directly into the small business I already own and use it to teach the next generation at the same time.”
So that’s exactly what she did.
Taylor wove sustainability into the daily rhythm of Busy Bee’s Daycare from the ground up. After meals, children help sort food scraps into a compost bin, which then feeds the gardens they grow together. Materials are reused for crafts, sensory activities, and projects rather than thrown away or replaced. Time outdoors and nature-based learning became a cornerstone of the daily routine. And at every step, Taylor explains the why, so the children understand that even small choices carry real consequences for the world around them.
The results have been quiet and profound. Sustainability isn’t a concept the children at Busy Bee’s hear about occasionally. It’s just how things work.
“The children now know our composting routine and independently bring their food scraps to the compost after meals,” Taylor says. “They have learned where food comes from by helping grow it, and they are beginning to understand why we reuse materials instead of simply throwing them away.”
For Taylor, the impact runs deeper than an environmentally conscious business. She is also a mother to a six-year-old daughter, and everything she has learned at Unity filters through that lens too.
“I am not only thinking about the environment from the perspective of a college student or business owner, but also as a mother who wants my daughter and the children in my care to grow up understanding and appreciating the natural world around them,” she says.
As she approaches graduation, what Taylor is most proud of isn’t a grade or a credential. It’s the knowledge that her Unity education never stayed confined to her coursework.
“I have been able to bring it into my home, my business, and my role as a mother,” she says, “and then pass what I have learned on to the next generation.”
That, it turns out, is exactly what an environmental education is for.
