Tag Archives: environment

We Future Cycle engages kids (and their grown ups) with environmental facts

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When we participate at a climate or community fair, we have a bunch of posters with environmental facts to engage the kids with. These are posters that illustrate shocking things under the headline “Did you know…” . Students as young as first grade will receive a detective sheet to collect clues and with the help of their grown ups are learning things like that the US is using over 500 million straws per day, or that the only place we can mine for the ore that gives us Aluminum is the rainforest. Each poster offers one or two quick things to change which will make a huge difference.

Engaging parents through their kids is the way to really change the communities for the better. We see this change in the lunchrooms we work in. More and more reusable water bottles, fewer unrecyclable juice pouches, more lunchboxes with less single serve packaged foods.

Creating a generation of kids that care also comes with the grown-ups attached to those kids to start to care.

Garbage reducing Solutions showing off big in White Plains schools

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Feeding 2200 kids with a varied menu while avoiding small single serve packaging is not easy and we at WeFutureCycle are looking every day for small changes that can have a big impact.

Take this fabulous new solution.

Before these large sour cream squeeze pouches were introduced, each student would be receiving a small soft plastic sleeve. These small sleeves were hard to open and the kids ended up having sour cream on their fingers . Once the sour cream is squeezed out of the sleeve, the main sleeve and the ripped off portion of it would often enough stick to the compostable tray and thus end up in the compost. Once these small plastic sleeves are in the compostable materials, they do not leave again, nobody picks them out at the compost site and they end up in the environment and possible in the food chain.

Positive changes are not difficult to achieve, they most often save money on top of being a much better option for the environment.

The Frightening Truth of Untouched Food Waste

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The discarding of untouched, fully packaged food items, just because one doesn’t feel like eating them right now, is an everyday reality in schools. WeFutureCycle is working within the schools to have share tables and goodie bag systems to feed these perfect food items into the hands (and mouths) of the ones that would like to consume them.

But the commercial untouched food waste is absolutely staggering and frightening. According to USDA about 16 % of all foods grown do not make it into the stores at all. Mostly for reasons of consumer quality expectations. Any blemish or too much of size deviation is a reason to reject that piece of fruit.

In addition to those initial 16% , there is an additional 30% of loss at the retail and consumer level. The retail level is comprised of packaging errors, transportation loss due to loss of cooling chain or other issues, and of course the running out of date at the grocery store. Store retail space is of high value, which means that if products are not selling well, the entire stock will be discarded to make room for another product that will turn over quickly.

A recent visit at the Quantum Power Bio Digester Plant in Southington CT was an eye-opening, shocking and utterly frightening experience. We saw pallets and pallets and pallets of untouched foods, being crushed so that the juice could be fed into the bio-digester for energy production. An entire factory hall with hundreds of pallets of yogurts, soda, grapes, strawberries, lettuce, canned fruits, juices…… all deemed below consumer expectations.

It was shocking to see people working to destroy food. The cost to society for consumers to reject slightly imperfect food is truly staggering. 46% of all grown, packaged, loaded, unloaded, displayed is being destroyed. 46%!!

Going the extra mile to not use unnecessary bags

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Commingled recyclables like milk cartons, aluminum foil, yogurt cups, bottles coming from a school cafeteria usually represent about 10 % in weight but 50 % in volume. That means two to three large 55 gallon contractor bags are being filled from one school alone.

The Westchester MRF (Material Recovery Facility) in Yonkers accepts the materials only unbagged to make the sorting process more efficient. So most school custodians line their receptacle with a black garbage bag, and then empty said bag into the container outside, and subsequently discarding the now dirty back into the garbage. 3 garbage bags used for no other reason than to not need to wash the bin.

Shout out to Pedro Molina, head custodian at Ridgeway Elementary School in White Plains. Pedro realized very early on, that it was a waste and that it is only a minute to rinse the bin, thus saving 3 garbage bags every day. This is what it means to go the extra mile. Seriously, way to go? Thank you!

Water, the most valuable resource

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Learning what happens when they flush is usually accompanied by extended noises of disgust, but after just a little while, students realize -and agree- that it is very important.

We usually begin by teaching them what it takes in terms of engineering and technology to bring potable water to their kitchen. It opens their mind. Not just to the process but more so to the concept of luxury that it is to have clean drinking water readily available. Learning about flocculation, filtering and disinfection as well as the fact that only 0.3% of all of the world’s water is fresh water available for drinking is quite eye-opening.

During a filtering activity it all comes into focus and students suddenly understand that clean water is our most valuable resource.

White Plains littlest ones are learning how to sort recyclables

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It is one of the highlights for me to go into a preschool class and teach 3y olds that their actions can make a difference. They are so eager to please, eager to learn and are so openly astonished that they have any power whatsoever.

Empowering kids to sort materials into the correct bin and showing them how that makes a difference is the beginning of a lifelong environmental awareness.

What I particularly like is showing them how their food scraps look like after they are composted. With great excitement they are touching and smelling the compost and all declare with sincerity that composting is good. They are off to a great beginning.

Recycling Milk Cartons at White Plains Schools

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Milk Cartons are fully recyclable, made out of high grade paper fiber with a thin coating of PET to waterproof them, they are the perfect container for milk or juice, for that matter most non carbonated beverages.

Produced from renewable resources, fully recyclable, light weight, easy to stack and compostable if need be , so -really- one of the best ways to package, store and serve drinks in a school environment or pretty much anywhere.

Carton recycling was only added in 2016 to the list of recyclable items in Westchester County.

We Future Cycle started its signature recycling program in 2014 and we realized quickly that volume wise, cartons by far outnumbered the plastic or metal packaging coming out of schools. We pushed Westchester County to join all surrounding counties and add milk cartons and juice boxes to their line up of recyclable materials.

We are pleased to save every day bags and bags of this valuable materials from being burnt as garbage, just so we can cut down some more trees to replace that paper.

We are also grateful to the Carton Council for sponsoring us to bring more recycling to a school near you.

Untouched Foods: White Plains School District has a great solution

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One of the most heart breaking problems we see in the schools is the amount of untouched food that gets discarded. A school with about 600 students will see about 180 lbs of food and paper waste. As WeFutureCycle is teaching students to separate their waste into Recycling, Composting and Trash, these 180 lbs are going into compost, making soil, but it also means that these 180 lbs have been cooked, and served but not eaten. 180lbs!

If moms knew just HOW MUCH of their lovingly prepared cut of fruit or veggies, the sandwich or the pasta they sent to school for their child to enjoy as lunch goes straight into compost.

WeFutureCycle is constantly working to recover untouched foods that are coming out of the lunchroom because food is not trash, just because a student did not feel like eaten an item. So, unopened milk or juice cartons, untouched yogurt or applesauce containers, commercially wrapped cheese sticks or baggies with carrots and apples are recovered, and made available for other students as seconds or snack.

George Washington Elementary school in White Plains has invested in a refrigerator and it is a pleasure to watch how students are now aware of the problem and are participating in the “Share Basket”.

This is a wonderful solution to a heartbreaking problem.

White Plains schools is reducing trash one pouch at a time

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WeFutureCycle has been working with the White Plains schools district for many years now and it is such a pleasure to see the positive changes that food service has implemented. All schools have now syrup bottles instead of the dreaded single serve pouches. This comes with the added benefit of practicing table manners for our littlest ones. ” May I have some syrup, please” is now a common phrase which is then accompanied with a life skill lesson to judge how much or little they actually want.

Recently we were also able to introduce salad dressing from bottles rather than pouches.

Reducing trash one pouch at a time, while teaching social and life skill is a win win situation for the environment and the students.

Being Green is in the little details

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We Future Cycle has brought recycling stations to many many schools. The basic idea is that most of the materials that the kids touch during lunch are not trash if they were just put into the correct bin.

Sorting their lunch waste into Compost, Recycling and Trash reduces garbage by a whopping 95% simply through diversion of the materials into reusable streams.

60% of the lunchroom waste is compostable, a combination of compostable trays and food scraps. 25% is excess liquid, 10% is recycling with materials generating revenue for Westchester County and only 5% is non-compostable, non recyclable materials that are then treated as trash and incinerated into our air.

Teaching students to sort is not that difficult, the key is consistency and adult support and buy-in. And the true sign of success is when you see students carefully sort their materials and then carefully set their trays in a neat pile.

That is LIVING the details to be green. Way to go!