My Litter Free Lunch Challenge

[ARmom]

We started a LITTER FREE LUNCH CHALLENGE at my children's elementary school.

The idea came from a post in the 'Green Organic Natural Simple Living' group.
We are trying to encourage parents, students and staff to bring a 'Litter Free' lunch to school.  By using reusable containers instead of plastic bags, thermos' instead of drink boxes, and lunch boxes instead of brown paper bags they are helping reduce waste, therefore reducing the amount of trash that gets thrown into landfills.

I brought the idea to my principal and she introduced me to Miss J - the head of our Green Team (I didn't even know we had a Green Team).  The Green Team really embraced this project and helped bring it to life!
I made a Litter Free Lunch Committee and about 7 moms joined.  Some from my CafeMom school group, and some from outside of CafeMom.

Today we had our first "Weigh In." 
Basically, we collected all the trash from each class during lunch time.
(In our elementary school it is Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grade.  We have a total of 30 classes (770 kids).
We then weighed the trash using a bathroom scale.  It was pretty easy!

I made some announcements to the students and they are all pretty excited for this.
It doesn't hurt we are giving a PIZZA PARTY to the class that reduces their litter the most by Earth Day.
(Bribery goes a long way)

Once a month we are going to weigh the lunch trash and keep track of the results.
We've advertised it using one flyer (on recycled paper) then the rest is done online.

Hopefully this takes off and the parents are as excited as the kids!
I know my kids were excited!


In the picture -
Vice Principal, Principal and our Litter Free team (we all got CafeMom shirts to wear).  I'm in green.

[shell81]

Oct. 27, 2009 at 11:39 PM

WOW that is kick ass!

Seriously though the title I was thinking a litter of kids and giving them free lunch LMAO

[KelleyP77]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 12:11 AM

That's super awesome, and that cause is a major reason why I got my daughter one of those lap top lunchboxes. It's fantastic!

[Cafe Robin]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 10:03 AM

[LitterFreeTeam]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 10:08 AM

[saslis]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 3:43 PM

Good for you.  What a wonderful initiative and you are helping those children build a life long conciousness of reducing their trash.

Lisa

www.nosickvisits.com

[Singlemomks]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 4:56 PM

That is an awesome idea!!!

[Cafe Lisa]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 5:13 PM

Can't wait to see the progress you make!

 

[Jillysmom]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 9:20 PM

I'm going to look into this with Jillian's school too. Though there is only about 350 kids in the school.

[ARmom]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 10:16 PM Thanks everyone! Jillysmom - alot of ideas came from wastefreelunches.org. There are so many schools doing this now - it's great!

(Original Poster)

[beanielips]

Oct. 28, 2009 at 10:23 PM

That is great!  One of the idea that I got on here was bento boxes.  I decided that they were out of my $$ range and got small bead storage boxes and make "lunchables" for my kids.  Not only are they much cheaper, they are re-suable boxes (and they even survived the dishwasher!)