At We Future Cycle one of the biggest challenges we see with lunchroom waste is the plastic baggies kids bring from home. We are able to compost and recycle 95% of lunchroom waste, and the remaining 5% is plastic bags and chip bags that go into the trash.
It’s easy to eliminate this waste, however, if lunches are packed in reusable plastic containers (i.e., Tupperware) or in one of the handy reusable wraps and containers shown in this video! Teach your child to be responsible for waste by packing his or her lunch in a reusable container. Be the leader in changing wasteful lunch-packing habits!
Diverting 98% of school lunchroom waste into recycling is now normal at the Westchester Schools that are running the We Future Cycle recycling program. This is what came out of a school with over 1000 students every day. 32 bags of loosely filled, dripping with left over milk.
Under the leadership of Deatra Bailey, 2nd grade teacher at Barnard, students are combining lessons of economics with being environmental. To raise money for reusable sandwich pouches as part of the ongoing effort to cut down on single serve packaging that ends up in the trash, Students are selling healthy snacks taking turns to be the cashier or accountant of the operation.
Barnard is now sporting a veritable forest of trees.
Meet the new “friends” of Ridgeway’s Ms. Vendola’s second grade. Eager students learned all about the wonders of worm composting, or technically called Vermiculture.
On April 23rd, just in time for Earth day, Westchester’s Material Recovery Facility added milk cartons to their list of recyclable materials. They are actually taking not only milk cartons which are called by the industry “gable tops” a paper product container with a PET lining, but also “aseptics” which is a paper container with an aluminum foil and PET liner.
Students from K through 2nd Grade are carefully walking the blue classroom compost pail to the school courtyard that houses a lovely learning garden, a greenhouse with the first projects budding and a nice compost tumbler.
Jefferson Elementary School has partnered with the Manhattanville College to become even greener. Under leadership of Maia Starcevic and Aimee Ferguson, proud recipients of the exclusive Science Wipro Grant, and in cooperation with the Manhattanville College fabulous raised beds were built right at the front playground.
Everyday at snack, the students will put all healthy snack waste into a little blue bucket instead of into the classroom trash bin. That blue bin is then carried into the courtyard and emptied into the composter. Students can see how decomposition takes place over time, and they realize that there is nothing yucky about composting. Each time they bring snack without creating garbage, they are rewarded with a leaf, that will then be proudly pasted to the “Jefferson feeds the Garden” Tree right outside Assistant Principal Ms Bruno’s office.
We knew from the get go, that the German International School in White Plains would not have much garbage, as it is a cafeteria with all washable plates, but even we were floored when after 450 students plus staff going through the line, we only looked upon 2 (two !) single serve wrappers and a wipe as trash. T H A T W A S I T ! 2 Wrappers!
And talk about the students instantly learning what it means to put their food waste into compost and not -as before- in trash. In classroom and auditorium presentations all grades, from Pre-K through 11 were acquainted with societies biggest problem. Trash!
We Future Cycle 