Sunny Galbraith is an environmental activist with local climate action group 350 Sonoma and a high school science and math teacher at Orchard View School in Sebastopol. Sunny is the chair of the Zero Waste North Bay Task Force, and works in collaboration with local environmental and labor community groups to make Zero Waste a reality in Sonoma County. She is the City of Sebastopol’s representative to the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency’s Local Task Force on AB 939, a body tasked with finding solutions to reduce waste county-wide, and serves on the newly-formed Sebastopol City Council’s Zero Waste Committee. With 350 Sonoma, Sunny co-chairs the Sebastopol Climate Action/ Zero Waste subcommittee, a group that collaborated with Recology to bring composting and metal utensils to the Sebastopol Farmer’s market and helps with greening the Sebastopol Peacetown summer concert series. Sunny works collaboratively with high school teachers from other Sonoma County schools as well as Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University professors to integrate climate action into the curriculum and support students in advocating for effective climate action at the local, state, and federal level.
Sunny received her B.S. in Biology from U.C. San Diego and her mathematics and biology teaching credentials from Sonoma State. She founded and runs the compost and recycling program at Apple Blossom and Orchard View Schools in which she trains elementary, middle, and high school students to run the lunchtime compost and recycle lunch program. Over the past thirteen years, her program has diverted over 90,000 pounds of organics and recycling from the landfill through on-site worm bins, the county green-waste program, and recycling. Sunny provides guidance to other schools in setting up student-run lunchtime compost and recycling programs and is currently assisting the new Zero Waste program at Analy High School. Sunny has been a classroom teacher for 17 years and an environmental educator for 22. In 2015, Sunny was awarded the West Sonoma County Teacher of the Year by the Sebastopol Rotary, and in 2019 received the Environmental Consciousness award by the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce.