Working creatively with youth to achieve zero waste, climate-smart communities and a plastic free biosphere.
Cafeteria Culture
  • About
    • About
    • Team
    • Our Story
    • Press
    • Partners
    • Contact
  • MICROPLASTIC MADNESS
    • MICROPLASTIC MADNESS
    • Host a screening
    • Creative Team and Credits
    • The Plastic Pollution Crisis
    • Recipe for #plasticfree Change
    • Educational Resources - Overview >
      • Microplastic Madness GAMES! >
        • Crossword Puzzle MPmad
      • NO-SEW T-SHIRT BAG +mask
      • Remote Learning resources
    • Youth Comments from around the world
    • Movie Feedback
    • Japan! Microplastic Madness
  • Plastic Free Lunch
    • Plastic Free Lunch
    • Press Release: Plastic Free Lunch Day Nov 2, 2022
    • PFLD School Food Service
  • Take Action
    • TAKE ZERO WASTE ACTION
    • Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act - Teach-in
    • DIY DATA ACTION litter cleanup >
      • DATA +ACTION litter clean up
      • Student and Teacher Litter Data Collection
    • Save Our Compost NYC
    • Skip the Straw
    • NY Bag Bill
    • NYC Foam Ban >
      • Foam Trays Out of Schools
      • Trayless Tuesdays
    • Youth Action on Plastic Pollution
    • Plastic Water Bottle ban NYC
    • Alternative Messaging >
      • No-Styro Puppets
  • Donate
  • RESOURCES/TOOLKITS
    • Resource Library
    • Educational Resources - Overview
    • MICROPLASTIC MADNESS Toolkit
    • Desktop Lunch Survey
    • SORT2SAVE KIT >
      • SORT2SAVE KIT - Cafeteria Rangers
      • Downloads - S2S - Cafeteria Rangers
      • Daily Operations - S2S - Cafeteria Rangers
      • Videos - Cafeteria Rangers
      • S2s Quick Launch Guide
      • Job Descriptions for Cafeteria Rangers
      • SORT2save Cheer! - lyrics + video
      • SORT2SAVE - About, Partners, License Agreement
  • Events
  • Programs
    • Youth Advocates
    • Plastic Free Waters - education >
      • Community Arts + Media for Trash Free Waters
    • Zero Waste Cafeterias and Schools
  • Cafcu Link Tree
  • Latest - Cafeteria Culture blog
  • Movies
  • FAQs - Getting Styrofoam Out of Schools
  • Volunteer
  • Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in Taiwan - Lessons Learned

"SORTIN' IT OUT" - the music video ( a work in progress)

8/29/2014

1 Comment

 

Sortin’ It Out - the music video (a work in progress) from Atsuko Quirk on Vimeo.

Please DONATE here to help us complete this video and more like it!
Jack Johnson's charity will double your donation! (thru September 1st- details here)

Now is  the perfect time for creating innovative strategies to engage NYC youth on the "why" and "how" of sorting recyclables and compostables - and the public school cafeteria is an ideal place to start! With NYC's recent expansion of recycling and composting, students and staff urgently need fresh and engaging tools to reduce school trash. Why not make change fun?

Watch our new music video, "Sortin' It Out"  (a work in progress), co-created with the fabulous students and staff from MS 246 Walt Whitman in Brooklyn. 

We need your help to complete "Sortin' It Out" and more edu-taining videos, all to be included in our multi-media Toolkit for School Cafeteria Waste Reduction.

Please make your tax-deductible DONATION now.  Together, we can inspire school communities to reduce, recycle, and compost for a zero-waste, healthy future.



WHY NOW?
This fall, NYC will be expanding the organics (aka compost) collection to include 700 or, roughly 40% of all NYC schools, across 3 boroughs! read more

THE CHALLENGE
It is particularly challenging for principals to allocate limited staff time towards initiating and maintaining new cafeteria procedure. Contaminated bins are all too common. Students and staff need inspiration!

SCHOOLS NEED TOOLS!
Our school programs empower students as leaders in the cafeteria, who oversee all recylcing, composting and proper sorting. "Sortin' It Out" - the music video is just the lead-in! We are close to completing more great videos, as part of our on-line TOOLKIT.

COST of our THROW AWAY CULTURE
NYC taxpayers spend $330 million per year to export garbage in gas sucking, carbon spewing trucks, that crisscross the city, first to waste transfer stations located primarily in low-income minority neighborhoods, then to out of state landfills and incinerators.

CLIMATE CONNECTION
The entire trash cycle contributes carbon and methane emissions to global warming. 
While the city is due to spend millions on constructing new waste transfer stations, only a small fraction of NYC tax dollars are spent on recycling and climate education.

CLIMATE LITERACY
Cafeteria Culture has been piloting cutting edge, interdisciplinary curriculum via our school programs. We believe that all NYC students, regardless of resources, should be climate literate!
CafCu's Edu-tainment media - made with and for NYC youth - can revolutionize the city's recycling and composting communication, while empowering minority youth as partners in creating climate-smart messaging.

Picture
Recording vocals - MS 246 students and Atsuko Quirk, CafCu Media Director.
CO-CREATING WITH YOUTH!
Youth drive trends, fearlessly pushing the limits of e-culture. CafCu's school programs are giving positive notice to youth as trend setters in a sustainability context and NYC is benefiting! 

WHY CAFETERIA CULTURE?
Our team collaboratively catalyzed Trayless Tuesday citywide and  more recently, new policies that will imminently rid all of NYC schools, along with the 5  largest US school districts, of 3 MILLION toxic and polluting styrene foam trays per day!

We have spent thousands of hours in school cafeterias across the city, collaboratively innovating, teaching, observing, and piloting new methods. We are the NYC school cafeteria waste reduction innovators!

CafCu gratefully acknowledges the generous support from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2 for funding our ARTS+ACTION program at MS 246 Walt Whitman. Learn more about our innovative, interdisciplinary school programshere.
See the US EPA's Student's Guide to Global Climate Change here.
1 Comment

Curbside Compost Messaging

8/10/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Painted organics binsPS 167 Painted Organics Tote

Youth artists create moving-messages 

to promote composting

We love the challenge of solving problems, especially when we are co-creating solutions with kids! 

Last spring, we piloted our first After School ARTS+ACTION program at PS 167 The Parkway School (Crown Heights, Brooklyn). The school's fabulous eco-artists learned the "why" and the "how" of recycling & composting, then were delighted to paint their original eco-messages right onto the school's compost totes (aka, bins with wheels).  The boring brown totes were transformed with bold student designs. Wheeled to the curbside each afternoon, the art and messages are shared with the neighboring community.

But there's more to painting totes than beautifying the curbside, sharing eco-messages, and taking kids' art to the streets.

The NYC School Organics (composting) Program recently expanded from 60 schools to over 400, with plans to accommodate all 1,800 public schools. The cafeteria lunch period, however, is full of challenges for achieving proper sorting and ensuring program success. Due to limited cafeteria staff, few educational components, and lack of kid appealing signage and incentives, the end-of-lunch contents of the compost totes often look identical to that of the trash bins.


The bright paintings on the totes help students and staff to take notice, reminding everyone to correctly sort food scraps and organics.

Additionally, curbside theft of these new totes is a growing problem. By transforming the totes with not-to-be-missed bright artwork, we hope to discourage thieves from wheeling them off of school property.

Our team has spent thousands of hours teaching students and working with school staff on garbage reduction initiatives. We are constantly piloting new ways of engaging entire school communities, improving cafeteria recycling, composting, & sorting procedures, and optimizing design. We are also testing new methods of co-creating media & messaging with youth on the environmental injustice of  NYC’s 11,000 tons of school and home garbage generated daily and its inextricable link to climate change.


A HUGE THANKS to AWESOME FOUNDATION NYC and NYC City Councilmember (now NYC Public Advocate) Letitia James, for supporting this project.

Learn more about our ARTS+ACTION School Program.

Help us to share more high quality programming with undeserved schools and communities. PLEASE DONATE!



0 Comments

    CafCu's blog:
    ​The LATEST

    CafCu updates feature news about our school programs, campaigns, press and new  videos! 

    You can also subscribe to our newsletter and send this awesome news directly to your inbox.
    ​Sign up  here.

    Archives

    December 2022
    October 2022
    May 2022
    August 2021
    March 2020
    November 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    March 2015
    August 2014
    May 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    August 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    RSS Feed

​
DONATE | ABOUT |MICROPLASTIC MADNESS|PLASTIC FREE LUNCH| EVENTS
​Educational Resources | Resource Library
Take Action|Youth Advocates |Contact 
​
​  Twitter @CafeteriaCu    IG @CafCu   FB CafeteriaCulture   TikTok @CafeteriaCu

Our VISION
We envision a plastic free, equitable zero waste future where landfill and incinerator garbage as we know it no longer exists;
where post consumption waste from food to packaging is drastically reduced
and what remains benefits our schools, communities, and the environment. 


Cafeteria Culture (CafCu) is a Project of The Fund for the City of New York, a charitable organization.
Founded in 2009 as Styrofoam Out of Schools.
Donations to Cafeteria Culture are eligible for charitable deductions under section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code.
Cafeteria Culture is a vendor of New York City Department of Education via Fund for the City of New York

Copyright © 2023 Cafeteria Culture