The Quick Facts: By instituting a lunchtime recycling program, schools can take an active role in reducing their waste stream.  Our school cut our lunchtime waste output in half.  With some good planning and some dedicated students, your school can reduce waste on campus, encourage positive environmental stewardship, and save some cash along the way.

If you are looking to green your school, a good first step is to institute a school-wide, lunchtime waste recycling program.  With some good planning and some dedicated students, your school can reduce waste on campus, encourage positive environmental stewardship, and save some cash along the way.

The first step, of course, is to gather interested volunteers.  Try forming a student-run green team to head-up the plan or ask a teacher if they might take on the effort as a class project.

In order to achieve a measurable goal, you need to know what you are dealing with at the start.  The project should be kicked-off with a waste audit.  Students will only be able to build a recycling system if they know the types of trash with which they are dealing.

To perform a waste audit, after a normal lunch period, students should count how many bags of trash were produced.  Then they need to dig into those bags (with latex-free gloves) to see what’s inside of them.  All trash should be separated into five piles: recyclables (i.e., aluminum cans and plastic bottles that can be redeemed at recycling centers for cash, depending on your state), paper items such as brown paper bags or cardboard (like the cardboard box of a “Lunchable”), non-redeemable plastics like yogurt containers, compostable food scraps, and true non-recyclable waste such as plastic baggies and paper napkins.

Once students have a handle on how much and the types of trash they generate, they need to find out what types of recyclables their city accepts.  For instance, in San Diego County, some cities take #5 plastic containers while others do not.  Most likely this will warrant a phone call to the waste hauler with whom your school has contracted.

Once the team understands the types of waste that can be properly recycled, they need to create bins and informational signs for each.  The bins and signs should be placed in a central location in the lunch area next to the traditional waste receptacles.  All trash and recycle bins should be kept in one area so that students begin to develop a consistent waste routine in the lunchroom.  For example, a stand-alone trash can near the exit may tempt a student to toss a recyclable in the trash because a recycle bin is not nearby.

As part of their efforts, students should determine if they would prefer the waste hauler to pick-up redeemable recyclables or if the students would rather collect and turn-in the plastic bottles and aluminum cans for cash value (again, depending on your state).  Many schools keep these monies to pay for other green programs.

For schools just embarking on green efforts, food composting may prove too ambitious to include on a first attempt at revamping your lunchtime waste program.  Once students are acclimated to separating their lunchtime trash, adding in this new component is easy.  To successfully implement food composting, the school will need either a compost heap or worm-composting bin to process the food scraps, along with bins to collect the food waste and signs to inform students.

With a working lunchtime plan in place, the team leading the effort will need to teach their fellow students how to use the new bins.  A school assembly announcing the plan or a student-made movie played as a commercial in each classroom are great ways to inform their classmates.  The team can also create a catchy slogan and work it into campaign posters to hang in the cafeteria and other visible areas around campus (perhaps involving art classes as well).

After working through some kinks and following the plan for a few months, conduct a final waste audit that measures the amount of real trash that has accumulated in the non-recyclable waste bin.  If the reduction is considerable enough, your principal may be able to scale back on the cost of waste removal.  In our school district, we were able to cancel one day a week of trash pick-up.

Report your success to the student body, along with the total amount of money earned by collecting redeemables.  The team can call or write their local newspaper(s) or television station(s) to seek media coverage to inform their community.

For tools and more detailed information about how to plan a waste reduction program visit the following websites: http://www.epa.gov/osw/partnerships/wastewise/plan-program.htm

http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/pdfs/resource.pdf

Quickfacts: A popular estimate suggests that the average child in school can create as much as 67 pounds of waste per school year. More and more schools are going green and promoting choices that encourage families to preserve our environment. Packing a waste free lunch is a perfect way that parents can reinforce these lessons and teach their children about responsible environmental stewardship. In addition to helping the planet, a zero waste lunch can save money and be more healthful.

Invest a Little Time, Get a Great Benefit
Convenience foods, ready to pack in your child’s lunch are a huge time saver for families struggling to get kids up and out the door for school each day. Tossing a juice box, bag of chips and a pre-packaged lunch meat and cheese combo box may shave an extra twenty minutes off your morning routine but it’s also contributing to a mountain of waste in our landfills and flooding your child with unnecessary sugar, salt and preservatives.

Consider investing that extra twenty minutes each morning in reducing the amount of trash on our planet by packing your child a “zero waste” lunch. A zero waste lunch is a packed lunch that does not leave behind any trash products. Ideally, everything put into the lunch, as well as the reusable lunch bag or box, is able to be recycled or reused (or composted for the more adventurous).

Change is Easy
The changes needed to overhaul a regular lunch to a zero waste lunch are relatively easy and may end up saving you money in the long run. Try exchanging paper napkins for cloth (I use my least fancy or make some out of old tablecloths). Trade those petroleum based zip lock bags in for sturdy reusable containers – if they are plastic rinse them by hand rather than putting them in the dishwasher. Instead of plastic utensils, I pack real silverware that I pick up at garage sales or thrift stores. If the occasional spoon doesn’t make it back home, I don’t loose any sleep over it. We have also accumulated a great deal of extra plastic utensils from our trips to the yogurt shop or “to go” meals eaten at home. We save these for lunches and just keep rinsing them off to reuse again.

A stainless steel water bottle works as a perfect replacement for a juice box. And, while purchasing a thermos or steel bottle may seem a bit pricey at first, you’ll save money over time because of its durability — even more if you fill it with water rather juice.

Added Benefits
Other than doing the planet the huge favor of reducing waste in landfills, there are two added benefits to packing a zero waste lunch. First, since you will be placing the food in each container, you get to control what your child eats. I make my own healthier version of the popular lunch meat and cheese combo boxes by using organic, nitrate-free, low sodium turkey breast, organic cheese and low fat, whole wheat crackers. My kids don’t even miss the candy treat. The other bonus is that you will see how much of the lunch actually gets eaten. As the containers return home, you’ll be able to spot if the blackberries were a hit or a messy miss. You also be able to determine if you can slide a little on the veggies at dinner because your little one devoured all the carrots and cherry tomatoes during lunchtime.

Try to go waste free at lunch for yourself — better yet promote a zero waste lunch program at your school. At my children’s school we provide education about zero waste lunch all year and on Earth Day we weigh our lunchtime trash and compare it to a weight taken at the beginning of the year. The improvement is inspiring to all.

Information used in this article was found at the following sources, which you can visit if you want to find out more about this topic:

http://www.wastefreelunches.org/ While this site is sponsored by a company that produces waste-free lunch kits, it contains detailed step-by-step information on how to set up a zero-waste lunch programs in the school setting.

http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/lunch.htm This site has all you need to get your school started on their way to a successful waste-free lunch day, including a letter that you can personalize and send home to parents to announce the event.

http://greenlivingideas.com/topics/eco-home-living/kids/tips-for-packing-a-nutritious-waste-free-lunch A detailed account on how to pack your waste-free lunch with nutrition.