If cafeteria food doesn't turn your stomach, this statistic surely will: New York City’s public school system goes through 850,000 polystyrene cafeteria trays per day. That's about 4 million a week and more than 153 million in a school year. They all end up in landfills. This made some Brooklyn parents mad as hell and they weren't going to take it anymore.
As reported in the New York Times, parents of PS 154 in Windsor Terrace have been working to ban the use of polystyrene in their school lunchroom. Instead, they've secured private sponsorship to replace polystyrene trays with ones made from bagasse - a fiber byproduct of sugar cane. Instead of the thousand years that it takes petroleum-based polystyrene to decompose, the bagasse trays take only 45 days.
New York City Council Member, Bill de Blasio has introduced a bill to ban polystyrene use in the city. Berkeley and Portland (OR) have set precedent by successfully passing similar measures.
Readers with school-age kids - do you know what kind of trays your school uses in its cafeteria?
(Image on right by Kevin Moloney for The New York Times.)
Originally posted by Carrie on Ohdeedoh.
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
is it better to use the kind that they just wash and reuse? That's what we had at the elementary school i went to, and the one my mom still teaches at.
i know it takes water and all that to clean them up, but it seems like it would be better then throwing things away.
view jmorey's profile
i kind of agree with jmorey. the amount of energy and chemicals used to produce anything, and then having to store and transport them, all adds up. wasting water to clean re-usable products is also wasteful, but seems like the focus should be on creating detergents that require less water and less harsh chemicals to do the trick, rather than on creating more things to throw out. i like the cradle-cradle idea, but not everything has to be disposable.
view Johnp's profile
Ours were and are reusable, too. Disposable trays seem like a nutty idea.
view Joan A.'s profile
When I was in school [not so many years ago] it was all about the paper or tin trays. Now, at college, it's all about the washable plastic trays...
What did get our goat in elementary school was when they changed from paper milk cartons to plastic milk bags because "LOOK AT HOW MUCH LESS ROOM THEY TAKE UP". Even as 4th graders we knew that paper is biodegradable...
view scaram0uche's profile
At the school where I teach, we have reusable plastic trays. The problem? Most of these kids are raised (I guess) to believe that everything is disposable. I don't know the numbers exactly, but we've replaced a large portion of the trays plenty of times. It's a shame. I love, love, love the idea of those more biodegradable ones!
view k1rstn's profile
we have reusable plastic trays that the 6th graders help wash at the school i work at. funny thing is it's the same district I went to school at and the trays look awfully familiar ... so no landfill waste!
view Joan in SB's profile