March 7, 2008
by Roberta Lasky
Educators offered their students some food for thought this week to kick off Waste-Free Lunch Week. Students at Grafflin, Roaring Brook and Westorchard elementary schools will participate in a Waste-Free Lunch Week from March 10 – March 14.
The goals of the program are to raise awareness about how much waste is created by typical lunch products and to actually cut down on waste from meals brought from home as well as those bought at school during this week. By modeling waste reduction in this way, the environmental committees of the three schools hope to engage the students in thinking about how they can reduce waste in other parts of their lives. The overarching objective of this exercise is to instill new habits in the students based on the environmental mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
“Through such programs we can provide our students with the knowledge and skills and values to empower them to be optimistic about their ability to control their future,” explained Katie Ginsberg, executive director of the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation, or CELF, and chair of Grafflin PTA’s Environmental Committee.
How to help from home
Students are encouraged to bring their lunch in reusable carriers (cloth bag, lunchbox); to bring their food in reusable food containers and use stainless steel utensils to eat it; to bring their beverages in stainless steel, refillable thermos; and to bring cloth napkins for tidying up. Products to avoid include single-use bottles, cans and cartons, plastic wrap, bags, foil, wax or Styrofoam, paper napkins and plastic utensils. Ginsberg recommends the Environmental Protection Agency’s web site as a good source for information about products to use in a waste free lunch and products to avoid. http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/education/lunch.htm
At Grafflin, Vice Principal Debbie Alspach expects a measurable reduction in the garbage they produce during this five day program.
Elementary students pursue many environmentally responsible goals
All three elementary schools have been running special collection drives of items that can be recycled. Alspach reported that Grafflin students collected 77 pairs of eyeglasses during the month of February that will be recycled. This month the school is holding a bottle cap drive. The bottle caps will be sent to Aveda, the hair and beauty products company, for their recycling program. Plastic bags will be the focus of recycling efforts in April.
The students at Roaring Brook Elementary School are collecting sneakers during March and April for the Nike-sponsored Reuse-A-Shoe sneaker drive. Through this national recycling program, Nike collects old, worn out athletic shoes of any brand and grinds them up for use as surfacing material for playgrounds and athletic areas such as basketball courts and tennis courts.
Roaring Brook students are also joining with other Westchester schools to donate their used Styrofoam to Hitsman Farm in Dutchess County, New York. This family farm manufactures special “green roof” soil from Styrofoam, which it coats with an organic pectin (a water-soluble carbohydrate obtained from certain ripe fruit) and mixes with high quality finished compost.
Westorchard’s PTA Library Committee is holding its 11th Annual Project 226 Book Donation Event next week as well. The committee is asking for donations of books appropriate for pre-school through middle-school level students. The books will be given to the Newburgh Public School District.
Roberta Lasky lives in Chappaqua with her husband and two children. She has a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Maryland.
Copyright 2008 NewCastleNOW.org