Mt. Styrofoam
Posted by Jennifer Mathis November 21st, 2007 .One way to address the issue of our mass consumption as a country, and the realities of what ends up in the landfill as a result is, well, ignore it.
A group of 5th grade students at Charles Pinckney Elemetary School are choosing a different tact. Pinkney’s Ecology Club, lead by S.A.I.L. teacher Mike Cline, recently held a conservation week at their school. The goal - to heighten awareness of the amount of lunch time waste their campus creates and provide possible solutions to the problem. To get it rolling, the Ecology Club educated and enlightened the staff and students at Pinckney through spots on the morning announcements. This was followed by their “tap and stack” campaign. For 5 days running they collected all lunch trays used by students, tapped the waste, cleaned, and then stacked them. 2,339 trays later a monument of Styrofoam trash was created and put on display in the atrium. Their efforts culminated with a “waste free lunch” day. Classes were encouraged to bring a lunch with as little packaging as possible. Mrs. Marques’ and Ms. Jacksons’ third graders embraced the idea and weighed in with 14 ounces of trash per class.
The Ecology Clubbers plan to take their findings to Dr. McGinley (head of Charleston County Schools) with the hope of spreading awareness and ultimately changing policies.
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Fantastic! Now this is how things get done, at the grassroots, ‘do it ourselves’ level.
Have you guys heard of the Laptop Lunchbox? It is completely waste free and sooo easy to use. I have gotten many fmailies at my sons’ school to switch to it and they rave about it. My only argument initially is that it is plastic but in 2 years they haven’t even remotely begun to wear out, I don’t recommend putting hot items in them for possible leaching (use a thermos for that). They truly are wastefree and would radically change any schools lunch time.
This is awesome. I’d like to see exercises like this take place all the time, and I wonder if providing an easy to follow set of plans would make it easier for teachers and schools to educate students on the environment. Mikes plan was great, and surely it would be replicated. Might be a cool side project for Go Green.