Waste Free Lunches

There are lots of enterprising companies that offer products so parents can pack a waste-free lunch for their children. Not to be a party pooper, but I see no real need for these special products. My son eats a peanut butter sandwich, some canned fruit, and some chocolate chip cookies. We just use some plain jane food storage containers and put his milk in a thermos. We include a napkin that is made from recycled paper. My son has been great remembering to not throw out his containers.

I wish more parents would use reusable containers instead of using Ziplock bags. BTW - Ziplock bags can be recycled. They are accepted (sans zipper) at facilities that accept plastic grocery bags. I can’t think of anything that a kid would normally have in his/her lunch that couldn’t go in a reusable container. Using reusable containers not only allows you to eliminate the need for disposable bags, it saves money. For example, instead of buying individual servings of applesauce, you can buy a big jar of applesauce and pour it into a reusable container. One of my goals is to start a “Waste-free Wednesday” program at our school. The lunch staff would reward students who brought a waste-free lunch by taking their picture for publication on the club’s blog.

Some schools have a Boomerang Lunch Program.  They encourage students who bring their lunch to bring all of their uneaten food and their waste home with them for disposal.  This has numerous benefits.  Parents can see what their children are or aren't eating and can adjust the lunches appropriately.  Parents will also see how much waste every lunch generates and will hopefully take the initiative to use reusable containers instead of disposable packaging.  If enough student bring a waste-free lunch, the waste volume generated in the cafeteria can be reduced dramatically.  This reduction can potentially result in the school being able to reduce the dumpster size and/or its pickup frequency.  Did you know that it costs about $15 a day for trash pickup at Woolridge?  More waste-free lunches in tandem with a vigorous recycling program can allow the school to save several hundred dollars in waste hauling fees.  So do your part and pack a waste-free lunch for your child today!

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Coming Soon! Mobile Recycling Station for the Cafeteria

The Woolridge Elementary School Green Club is in the process of designing and constructing a mobile recycling station for the cafeteria. This will serve as a visual reminder to the students for them to recycle and will make recycling easier for them.

Conceptually, the recyling station will look similar to the one in this picture.

Our recycling station will be constructed in a very green fasion. Our recycling station will be constructed of reclaimed kitchen cabinets (three 18" cabinet modules) from the Richmond Habitat for Humanity. It will have two bins for mixed stream recycling (paper, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, etc) and a third bin for juice pouches.

ECO Supply is a provider of green building products here in Richmond. ECO Supply donated a 1-1/4" thick, 48” x 60” sheet of Paper Stone countertop. PaperStone is a composite made from recycled paper and proprietary, petroleum-free phenolic resins made from raw materials like cashew nut shell liquid. Click HERE to learn more about Paper Stone.

The Lowe's on Winterpock Road is also graciously donating supplies towards the construction of the recycling station. We hope to have the recycling station constructed and in use in January 2010. A big thank you to the teachers and parents who helped make this project a reality. Thanks also to everyone who participated in our fundraising events. The funds we raise go towards projects like this one. I will post construction pictures of pictures of the final product in a future post.

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Dumpster Diving - The Results!

We had a great time at our first green club meeting of 2009 learning how to green our lunch. The kids learned how NOT to pack a lunch from Wendy Wasteful and how to pack a lunch from Go Green George. Then we talked about how 16 bags per day (almost 3,000 bags per year) of cafeteria trash are landfilled from our school alone! We talked about how to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We went outside and looked through a bag of cafeteria trash and found lots and lots of trays, some recyclables, chip bags, milk cartons and some untouched food. We talked about how we could reuse the black trays, how to get the kids to recycle better inside the lunchroom, what to do with those chip bags and if we could ever use washable trays again.

I still would like to see us try and use washable trays for one day (maybe during Earth Day). Don't you think the kids should experience a nostalgic moment like taking their tray to the window? One possibility to make this happen would be for parents volunteers to wash the trays that day.

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Green Club Morning Meeting for K - 2

Our first WES Green Club morning meeting for students K - 2 will be held on Thursday, November 19 at 8:30 in the cafeteria. Please arrive on time as the program will promptly start at 8:30. Students will go to their classrooms at the end of the program. Parents are welcome to stay as well. Please contact us at gogreenwoolridge@gmail.com if you'd like to help out.

Students will be learning about the waste generated in the cafeteria and the things we can do to reduce that amount. To help visualize how much trash students generate during lunch each day, we will "dumpster dive" and sort through some of the trash bags and see what we find. I think that what we will find will shock you. After sorting through the trash, we'll talk about the many things we can do to reduce the amount of trash we generate and increase the amount of waste that we recycle. We'll also talk about waste-free lunches and will make a fabric snack bag.

We'll summarize our results in a future post and talk about some of things we can do to reduce the amount of waste we generate.

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