Zero Waste Challenge Gets the Garbage Out of School Lunches
Visit your local school during lunchtime and you’re bound to find the garbage cans overflowing with leftover food, plastic bags, paper napkins, and lots and lots of disposable packaging.
In fact, the average school lunch in the U.S. produces more than 67 pounds of waste each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. For a school with 300 students, that means upwards of 20,000 pounds, or 10 tons, of garbage from lunch alone.
This spring, students across Cuyahoga County will learn how to reduce the waste in their lunchboxes, thanks to the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District’s annual Zero Waste Challenge. In 2009, more than 2,000 students took part in the Challenge, which encourages participants to pack so-called “zero-waste” lunches in which every item is either eaten, re-used or recycled. The Challenge is open to all schools in Cuyahoga County. The school with the least lunchtime waste per pupil wins. Deadline for entries is April 28.
Give Your Lunchbox a Green Makeover
By making some simple changes, parents can reduce, or even eliminate, the waste in their children’s lunchboxes.Step 1: Buy a reusable lunchbox.
Step 2: Get rid of disposable plastic—sandwich bags, utensils, and bottles—and pack food in reusable containers. Use stainless steel forks and spoons.
Step 3: Buy a reusable drink container, such as a thermos or plastic bottle.
Step 4: Just say no to “single-serve” packaging (individually wrapped food, like chips or apple sauce). Instead, buy food in bulk and repackage it into reusable containers.
Step 5: Don’t forget the cloth napkin. For about the price of a roll of paper towels, you can purchase a reusable cloth napkin. Make it fun by selecting colors and patterns your child will enjoy.
Step 6: Try to avoid leftovers. Even food waste causes environmental problems when it breaks down in a landfill.
“The Zero Waste Challenge shows how much difference a few changes can make,” said Kathleen Rocco, education specialist at the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste Program. The schools participating in the Challenge in 2009 cut their lunch trash by at least half. Last year’s winner, Incarnate Word Academy in Parma Heights, chopped its lunchtime waste by almost 75 percent.
Rocco encourages students and parents participating in the Challenge to use reusable lunchboxes, food containers, napkins and utensils and to buy in bulk in order to eliminate unnecessary packaging. She also suggests schools start the Challenge with an audit of the garbage produced during lunch. This helps students and parents understand what changes they can make to cut down on lunchtime waste.
Incarnate Word launched last year’s Challenge by collecting the garbage produced at lunch on a Friday. Members of the school’s Nature Club met over the weekend to go through the bags to learn what students were throwing away. “When it’s all laying out in front of you, it’s amazing. The kids couldn’t believe it,” said Mary Beth Schram, a parent coordinator for the club.
Over the following months, Incarnate Word’s Nature Club ran an educational campaign to teach students how to pack a zero-waste lunch. “The key to the project was the students. They became passionate about it. They went into the classrooms and spoke and showed examples of the zero-waste lunches,” Schram said. Posters promoted the event and tracked the school’s progress by classroom. By the day of the event, the students were raring to go. “The kids were really motivated,” Schram said. “Had I not been there to actually see how little was being thrown away, I would have had a hard time believing it.”
For more information on the Zero Waste Challenge or to sign up, visit www.cuyahogaswd.org/education/contests.htm#zerowaste or email Kathleen Rocco at krocco@cuyahogacounty.us.