Mary Beth Schaye - '77

“It started with a pancake breakfast,” Mary Beth Schaye describes. While serving on the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) for her daughters’ elementary school, and planning their first big event of the season, Mary Beth started down the path of environmental activism. Faced with a potential onslaught of waste, the demand for a solution arose. Mary Beth took it upon herself to find products that were compostable, the end goal being a zero-waste event. Through her local government’s environmental organization, she was put in touch with a local woman who had just started a container-swap composting service. She guided Mary Beth to the compostable products that the PTA should order, provided collection containers and provided instructions for filling them. At the end of the event, something had clicked, and Mary Beth knew that she wanted to teach others this easy way of responsibly managing waste.

“I was hooked on zero waste from that point forward and wanted to show everyone how simple it can be,” she says. “I even received an Environmental Hero Award from the governor of Illinois for the work at our school.”

Having her children led her to imagine the future more clearly, their future, and the responsibility of protecting it became very real. This perspective ultimately guided her career path.

A CCSD21 alumna, from Longfellow Elementary to Cooper Middle School (back when it was called Cooper Junior High School), Mary Beth knows this community and knows the significance of our environmental impact. She went on to attend Buffalo Grove High School and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her roots in Longfellow run especially deep, as her mother, Betty Loughlin, was a second-grade teacher there for much of her childhood. After school, Mary Beth would often stay in her mom’s classroom and help with whatever she could until it was time to go home. She also remembers the one time her mom substituted in her class in first grade and feeling unsure what to call her, a memory she still finds funny and meaningful. It’s also a memory she shares with her former classmates. At a high school reunion, they reminisced about how they all remembered Mary Beth’s mother as a favored teacher.

Today, Mary Beth works as a Zero Waste Consultant for The Urban Canopy in Chicago. It’s here that she helps schools, universities, restaurants, and homes adopt more sustainable practices. The company provides a container swap composting service that supports efforts to reduce waste and combat climate change. Her work varies day-to-day and includes educational presentations, community tabling, outreach, and sales, all of which involve educating others about sustainability. She also works alongside programs related to food rescue, a CSA, and an urban farm, which she finds very gratifying.

Mary Beth’s time in CCSD21 also left a lasting impact. She loved sixth grade chorus, learning and playing clarinet in band from fourth through eighth grade, and performing in the pit for junior high musicals. These experiences gave her a strong musical foundation that she continues to use today. Field Day was another highlight, where she excelled and collected ribbons that she kept in a coffee can for years. Today, she uses them as bookmarks as a reminder of those moments.

Outside of work, Mary Beth enjoys singing, sometimes professionally but mostly for fun, and traveling, especially when it allows her to experience different ways of living and reflect on how she might incorporate those ideas into her own life. She also spent more than a decade working as a lifestyle model. From 2012 to 2024, she appeared in campaigns including a role as “Diamond” for Potawatomi Casino, where she was featured on billboards as part of a group campaign.

Her advice to current students is simple: follow your curiosity, listen to your intuition, and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

If you know someone who embodies the spirit and values of our school district—whether a student, staff member, or alumnus —we’d love to hear about them! Please send their name and a few details to [email protected]  so we can consider featuring their story in an upcoming profile.