By one estimate, an average school-age child using a disposable lunch, generates 67 pounds of waste per school year. That would add up to about 50,250 pounds of lunch waste for Clemson Elementary School alone. Get inspired to green your lunchbox by thinking about what you can do to cut down on trash. Here are a few suggestions for getting started:
-Pack a cloth napkin instead of paper.
-Pack stainless-steel utensils or reuse plastic ones.
-Pack a reusable drink container instead of disposable juice boxes, pouches, cans, and plastic bottles.
-Pack lunch items in reusable containers. Try to avoid using plastic wraps, plastic bags, wax-paper bags, and aluminum foil.
-Avoid purchasing pre-packaged items.
-Pack lunches in a lunch box instead of relying on paper or plastic bags.
-Pack stainless-steel utensils or reuse plastic ones.
-Pack a reusable drink container instead of disposable juice boxes, pouches, cans, and plastic bottles.
-Pack lunch items in reusable containers. Try to avoid using plastic wraps, plastic bags, wax-paper bags, and aluminum foil.
-Avoid purchasing pre-packaged items.
-Pack lunches in a lunch box instead of relying on paper or plastic bags.
Check out http://www.wastefreelunches.org/ for more information
3 comments:
The Go Green team will share out "waste-free lunch" punch cards and reward kids with no waste in their lunch bags.
Here is an e-mail with one mother's observations: (Get comfy in your chair, it's rather lengthy...)
Greetings Mrs. Beck and Mrs. Lehmacher -
I have some concerns about the lunch-line recycling rewards program that has started at Clemson Elementary. Please understand foremost that I applaud
your efforts to educate our students about the ideals of recycling and reusing. However, I have a dilemma I hope you can help with or perhaps guide me to the correct person to approach.
I have two daughters, one in kindergarten and one in second grade. We pack their lunches the same way, using a thermos for hot foods and a water bottle, both of which come home to be cleaned and reused. My husband also packs snacks and many times, these are prepackaged foods such as fruits or
applesauce, the containers of which are not recyclable in this community yet. Additionally, we will send small Ziplocs of snacks that can be eaten during class snack time (in PMA) and then brought home to be refilled and
taken back. Our daughters are instructed to dispose of paper napkins at school. I prefer the use of paper napkins in interest of bacterial growth. Most of the time, the napkins we buy are indeed made from recycled
materials, not virgin wood products. Especially considering the consequences of harboring microbial infectious materials in a school environment, we do
not use fabric napkins in school lunches as we cannot "be there" to make sure they are handled correctly if a child should sneeze and use the napkin at lunch to wipe their nose. I doubt many parents have time to interrogate their youngsters over what happened with their napkins during lunch. And, in truth, if we are then laundering cloth napkins continually, while we may reduce the stress on landfills, we are in turn increasing the stress on equally imperiled energy and water resources. We are making an effort to use more Tupperware containers to store wet foods but at times, this is not possible or inconvenient. Again, in the interest of curbing bacterial growth (I am a biologist), I instruct the girls to dispose of any Ziplocs that held "wet" foods. It is highly unsanitary for these foods to remain in their lunchboxes for the remaining hours of that school day, possibly longer, especially if I cannot be sure they are sealed tightly by small fingers, not spilling sugar waters all over a lunch box interior or leaking onto school
furniture or backpacks that are not as frequently inspected. I am a firm believer in responsible and reasonable recycling but feel it is also necessary to put the health and wellbeing of my family first.
So my concerns are thus:
First, my younger daughter is rewarded with a star punch so long as she has used a water bottle or thermos, regardless of whether she has tossed any Ziplocs. However, my older daughter was asked whether the Ziploc she put back in her lunch bag would actually be reused. I feel this is a double standard. It is very difficult as a parent to explain why one child is rewarded while the other is not when their lunches are prepared exactly the same way. I would ask that your groups treat all students equally. I understand that it may be more difficult to explain the situation to a younger student or to handle the situation when there are more students leaving the cafeteria at the same time. However, when instituting a reward system, the absence of reward then becomes a punishment for those not rewarded. And simply put, my children do not pack their own lunches. So, if we are being fair and honest, this system is not really in place to teach recycling to the students but rather to force the teaching of recycling to parents.
Second, either a student is rewarded for not throwing things away or they are not. If a child simply puts all of their trash back in their lunch box and neglects to throw ANYTHING away, are they rewarded as well? Even if the same items would be disposed of at home? In this case, it would be in our best interest to encourage the children not to toss anything and to carry wet disposables home, encouraging the growth of bacteria and fungi in their lunch boxes, just to enable their equal treatment. If those viewing the contents of a lunchbox are going to question whether a child would TRULY reuse a Ziploc (or rather whether the PARENT would truly reuse the Ziploc),
then this imposes a dilemma for the student. We would hope they would be truthful. And we have explained to our daughters about when we reuse Ziplocs or other storage materials. However, my daughter expressed frustration
because, in truth, she wasn't sure whether her father was planning to reuse or toss that particular Ziploc. It really wouldn't be up to her, anyway. Additionally, if we were to have our daughters use a napkin and spoon supplied by the school that is wrapped in a plastic bag and then creates
more trash, then their lunchbox would actually be packed with only reusable products. Would they receive a star or not?
Again, I am encouraged that the school is seeking ways to develop more responsible resource users. My husband and I are both natural resource professionals; we are both trained foresters, and I am a certified wildlife conservation biologist. I am glad to see a push to use electronic communication though I'm sure this might cause some confusion for the
teachers when disseminating aterials between students who do or do not subscribe. I am also excited about the prospects of creating a composting
program and hope to see the community garden take off though I'm sure the farm will undoubtedly have its similar hitches. I am frustrated, though, for my children, when the recycling program may actually not be achieving its intended purpose. We have stressed, for example, that recycling glass may or may not be a viable avenue when considering the processes and energy
required to create a virgin glass container vs. a recycled glass container. We also stress to our girls that in most cases, recycling does not actually
mean recycling into the same product (i.e. plastic bottles rarely become plastic bottles again while milk containers can indeed be recycled and reused as milk containers again) and that recycling is not without a cost.
Please understand that I support your work to reduce the refuse produced in the school and am so glad someone was willing to step up and take this important initiative forward. I would hope that you would consider my
concerns with the program and attempt to make the program as equitable as possible, understanding that in many cases you may not be dealing with
completely uneducated families but rather families who subscribe to
different ideologies for ustifiable reasons.
Thanks much for your help,
Dear Mrs. Rinehart,
Thank you very much for your observations on our waste-free lunch initiative. Your concerns are valid and enlightening, but before addressing them, let me express that we wish you could join our GoGreen Team and help us with your insights and expertise.
The waste-free lunch is one of the initiatives of the GoGreen Team, which is a group of parent volunteers who would like to allow our children to be exposed to "green ideas" in school, not only at home. But, we are treading
on uncharted territories, since this is a very new and unprecedented grass-root initiative. At this point, we are trying to explore what and
how could be done to increase awareness and model environmental
responsibility to our kids.
After a "green audit" we did at the school last year, we identified paper consumption and lunch room practices as the two leading sources of waste
production. We tried to address the issue of paper consumption with our paperless initiative, and we are pleased that you also find that beneficial.
To address the issue of lunch room practices is more difficult, since most of the waste production is beyond the scope of our school. The only segment we can claim responsibility for is how we pack our lunches. This week we took upon the task of raising awareness of the fact that we can make choices when we do that (ie pack our lunch bags), and some are more
sensitive to the environment, some are less. I am happy to report that we did meet a great enthusiasm, and children did start thinking about waste
reduction.
Once again, this week all we wanted to achieve is to make children aware of the question of packaging choices. The waste free lunch initiative is intended to be a segment of a wider effort to "make Clemson Elementary"
green. Our plan - which we will finalize this week with the school faculty and staff- is that after we introduced the idea of waste-free lunches and a punch-card, each class will have one card where they can collect punches
for all the activities they do to protect our environment. On the
once-a-month "Green Day"-s (I think it will be the second Wednesday of each month)the GoGreen team will be present at the cafeteria and punch the
class cards for their waste-free lunches and other activities.
On the other hand, your explanation about health risks adds a whole new dimension to our initial idea of how to define waste-free lunches. We fully agree that we need to take sanitary questions and the complexities
of recycling into consideration as well. (For this reason I'm forwarding this e-mail to the other commitee members as well, I think we'll all learn from your comments.) After reading your useful comments, perhaps we could
create a better definition of waste-free lunch or what we should encourage kids to strive for. What do you think would be a realistic and healthy(!) target for a lunchbag? Should we ask if there is at least one reusable
container in the lunch bag? Should we encourage the kids that instead of cloth napkins they use one(!) paper napkin?
Your suggesions would be truly welcomed - even at this point. [I think that children can also understand that no adult knows all the answers and we could show them a good example admitting just that, and by telling them
that we have learned something new, and share the new information with them.]
One more point I have to make clear: the GoGreen Initiative is a parent initiative, and though the school administration is very welcoming and facilitating in our efforts, they are not responsible for the mistakes the GoGreen Initiative might make. (For which mistakes I can only provide the
explanantion that we are learning the trade as we go.) The only way to ensure that we are doing things right, is to have as many knowledable parents, like yourself, involved in the GoGreen commitee's work.
This is why we ask for your involvement and thank you for your comments.
PS> The above is my personal answer to your e-mail, as I didn't have the chance to discuss your comments with the other commitee members just yet. But we've just spent the evening fine-tuning some of our activities, and
the definition of the waste-free lunch was one of the items on our agenda. If you don't mind, I'll forward this to the other committee members as well, and I am sure that they will be also responding to your suggestions.
Thank you, again!
Post a Comment