Sustainable at School: 3 Ways to Show Your Kids How to Lead the Way!
Sustainable at School: 3 Ways to Show Your Kids How to Lead the Way!
We all remember school lunch...
Those of us who have woken up to the perilous landscape of food choices in the U.S. remember school lunch as a cheap, unhealthy, and often wasteful way to feed our kids.
Not only is the food often poor in quality, the plastic, styrofoam, and the animal products make for a difficult series of choices. While we recognize that it can be a challenge for some parents to pack lunch each day, here are some easy tips to set your kids up for sustainable success!
Pack a Zero Waste Lunch
Think of your school lunch as a kid... What did it come with? A cold burger, plastic silverware, milk cartons and a foam tray. Not only are these materials bad for the environment, they're bad for our kids too. What better way to start the conversation with our kids and make a difference than packing their lunch in sustainable materials. It's one of the easiest ways to get started right!Start a Plastic Cap Program
STOP! Don't recycle that bottle cap.
It's unfortunate that our plastic water bottles, though strongly discouraged, are recyclable but the caps are not. The sheer quantity of sodas, waters, and other plastic capped beverages passed around a school campus each day is extraordinary. Much like Planet Protein's recycling program, a bottle cap recycling program is a way to turn a liability into an asset, or in the least, a neutral. It also helps illustrate the importance of sorting our recyclables, lest we defeat the purpose altogether.
Start a Worm Farm
There's something delightfully innocent about playing in the dirt. As kids, we were fascinated with bugs, dinosaurs, and sharks. Some of us may remember learning about worms in grade school science. Today, we see few options better than encouraging our schools to start their own worm bin program. A worm compost bin is a means to teach our children both of the ills of food waste and the immense power that this "black gold" holds.
