Most pre-K-12 school administrators will agree that teaching students to recycle and reduce garbage is important. Yet all too often, the message is not consist throughout the school day and it is rarely a school priority. Plastic trash in the school cafeteria, such as polystyrene (or styrofoam, or foam) trays and plastic “sporks” (or cutlery), is not only an environmental concern, but may actually pose serious health threats to children, either directly through the migration of chemicals to hot food, or indirectly by way of the disposal of plastic trash through incineration (or burning) of garbage. The chemical styrene, a major component of polystyrene, is toxic and polluting from the start of manufacturing and forever thereafter. Styrene has been categorized as a “reasonably anticipated to be carcinogen" by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Many studies have shown that styrene leaches from containers into hot food. When styrene containers become litter, they easily end up in our rivers and oceans, continuing to break down into microplastics or tiny bits of toxic-laden plastics that are killing marine wildlife and contaminating our seafood. In many schools across the U.S., school meals are still served on toxic and polluting styrene foam trays. Yet the long term effects of hot food served daily to children, directly onto trays made of the chemical styrene - sometimes 3 times per day and over a 13-year period - has yet to be studied. And school food can be very hot! To ensure food safety, state health regulations typically require certain school food items be kept at temperatures of 140 degrees or higher while sitting in serving trays in the cafeteria food line. Of added concern, many children enjoy scraping their foam trays when they are eating with a "spork" or fork, possibly eating small bits of styrene. After a usage time of about 20 minutes, whether incinerated, landfilled, or littered, styrene containers leave a trail of toxic particles that will last forever in the natural environment. In 2010, after grassroots pressure from parents, the directors of New York City School Food, the largest school food service in the US, serving 860,000 meals per day, made the decision to reduce styrene foam tray usage by initiating Trayless Tuesdays, that resulted in an immediate 20% reduction of foam trays across the city without any additional cost to the city. Several years later, they joined forces with the 5 other largest urban school districts by forming the Urban School Food Alliance to collectively-purchase and drive down the cost of a new compostable plate. As of the fall of 2015, these 6 cities combined have completely eliminated half a billion foam trays per year from landfills., incinerators and student meals across the US. If your school is still serving school meals on foam trays, this is a perfect time to focus on plastic-free and zero waste initiatives. It can, however, be challenging to bring busy school administrators and school food and custodial staff on board. Starting a student-led Cafeteria Ranger program is a great first step for reducing school food and packaging garbage, while gaining school-wide buy-in. Separating post-lunch recyclables and garbage with students as the leaders is an excellent way for the entire school community to visualize the amounts of resources and potential resources versus trash though a daily ritual that benefits both the school and community (watch “SORT2SAVE cheer - zero waste cafeteria is almost here”). This can also create a powerful domino effect, sparking interest in plastic-free campaigns, such as plastic water-bottle bans, and plastic straw-free schools. It can even inspire student-led plastic-free advocacy and youth-made plastic free waters video campaigns that reach far beyond the school!
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We are thrilled to share our first international school project, captured in this inspiring documentary short. This is a perfect video to watch and share for World Oceans Day (June 8)! Watch Tokyo & NYC Kids Share a Message About Marine Litter, directed and edited by Cafeteria Culture's award winning Media Director, Atsuko Quirk, and produced by Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Fourth grade students from PS15 Patrick F. Daly Elementary School in Red Hook, Brooklyn and Hirai Elementary School in Edogawa Ward, Tokyo worked simultaneously on reducing local plastic litter that contributes to a global plastic marine pollution plight. Watch this video and let these passionate 4th graders in Tokyo and NYC inspire you to take action to reduce single-use plastics!
Then make your tax deductible donation to Cafeteria Culture! Help us to bring more cutting edge, culturally rich environmental education to underserved youth. While President Trump was making the decision to abandon the Paris climate agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries, our Tokyo-NYC project students from Red Hook, Brooklyn -- a community devastated by Superstorm Sandy -- were taking climate-smart action, then sharing local knowledge and efforts with project-partners living opposite sides of the globe! These students gained valuable insight by learning from their young Tokyo project partners, participating in an international exchange of ideas about local, upstream solutions for a complex and escalating global plight of plastic marine pollution. Cafeteria Culture needs your support now more than ever. The last two years, a significant portion of our school programming was funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2. We are not counting on this funding for the 2017-18 school year. We need your donation of any size to continue to bring innovative and collaborative environmental and civic education to underserved NYC youth! Watch Tokyo & NYC Kids Share a Message About Marine Litter
And thank you for watching and sharing! #SaveOurOcean #AAOPlasticFree Watch our latest video! What Teachers Say About Cafeteria Culture's Creative Environmental Education Cafeteria Culture is teaching creative storytelling through the visual arts, performing arts, and video production that is merged with citizen science and civic engagement. Our programs are giving underserved New York City youth a voice on urgent environmental issues. Taught in partnership with classroom teachers, our environmental education programs empower students with the skills of collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, and participatory democracy. Students then engage local, national, and international audiences with their creative and informed youth-made messaging and videos. Watch this video and find out what teachers are saying about our unique environmental education programs! Please give the gift of creative environmental education to more underserved New York City youth! Your year-end donation is a critical for us to continue innovating, teaching, and sharing our creative environmental STEM curriculum.
LITTER MONSTERS are everywhere, but you can take immediate action to keep plastic street litter out of our oceans and out of marine wildlife. Refuse single-use plastics by bringing your own cup, bag, straw and containers for to-go food! Changing your behavior is not so hard when you can grasp the consequebces of each peice of plastic packaging you use every day, even when you think you are disposing of it properly. Cafeteria Culture co-created LITTER MONSTERS, a stop motion animation/live action hyrbid documentary video, with PS/MS 34M 5th graders a part of our YOUTH MEDIA forTRASH FREE WATERS program.* Students were alarmed to learn about our marine litter plight. They scripted this story from thier unique urban youth POV to show their community and the world how seemingly harmless plastic street litter gets into our waterways, threatens our oceans, harms marine wildlife and returns to us in our seafood dinner. Did you know, when it rains in New York City and over 700 other US municipalities, large amounts of water can cause combined sewer systems to overflow? This allows street litter and raw sewage to flow directly out to our local waterways, making its way to the ocean and eventually to the bellies of marine wildlife. Get inspired to take action to reduce your to-go plastic use. Together with our students, we are testing out and sharing youth-designed, community-based solutions to reduce local polluting plastic litter that becomes a toxic global threat to our oceans and wildflife. * THANK YOU to all of our individual donors and funders who made our Youth ARTS+Media for TRASH FREE WATERS School Program 2015-16 and this video possible:
Our student leaders charmed the visitors, sharing their point of view on upstream, youth-based solutions for reducing plastic street litter and keeping it out of our oceans. They also presented the premier screening of ,"LITTER MONSTERS," their stop-motion/live action student-made short, coming soon to YouTube! Our students are concerned advocates!Students from Cafeteria Culture's Youth Media for Trash Free Waters Program at MS246 Walt Whitman spoke knowledgeably and passionately at a Press Conference on Flatbush Ave. about plastic street litter. Students explained to community leaders and government officials how this local problem is negatively impacting the health of our oceans, marine wildlife and our seafood chain, then asked for more curbside recycling bins for their neighborhood. Watch their amazing youth POV #trashfreewaters videos here! Get inspired and take action! Thank you, US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2, for generously funding the Youth Media for Trash Free Waters Program at MS246. MS 246 Walt Whitman alumni from Cafeteria Culture's Youth Media Trash Free Waters program (Nerlande and Shazia pictured in the front) spoke at a Brooklyn Press Conference with NY City Councilmember Eugene, NYC Department of Sanitation officials, and Flatbush community leaders and business owners (June, 2016) SORT2SAVE kit is here! Start a Cafeteria Ranger program today with our online toolkit. It's FREE!9/25/2016 Have you been wanting to start a school cafeteria recycling program but can't get past the first step? We know the chaallenges and we have the perfect resource, SORT2save.org. It's fun, it's free and now is an excellent time of the school year of to start a student-led Cafeteria Ranger program. Get started with these 8 steps! The SORT2SAVE KIT - Cafeteria Ranger Program is hands-on service learning and student leadership in the cafeteria. Students oversee all recycling and sorting on a rotating schedule. All students can participate. Make your school's zero waste intiative fun - in 8 steps! The SORT2SAVE KIT includes "edu-taing" videos (on YouTube, on Vimeo, or on our S2s video page here->), kid friendly signs, Ranger badges, introduction letter/email templates for teachers and parents, and so much more! Here are just a few of the benefits that typically result from a Cafeteria Ranger program:
- A significant reduction of your school's cafeteria garbage due to improved sorting - Increased awareness of the benefits of recycling, composting, and reduction - Provides new leadership pportunities for students during school meal time - Saves custodian and school food staff labor time by reducing the overall number of bags being pulled from garbage and recycling bins - Fewer plastic bags are used, whih means saving money and resources, as well as reducing the amount of plastic that is going to landfills and incinerators - A cleaner cafeteria floor, which saves custodians and school food staff time - Improvement of the overall quality of the cafeteria experience - An excellent starting point that leads to infusing a zero waste culture school wide! Get started at SORT2save.org! A huge congratulations to our new partner school, NEST+m, for winning a 2016 Super Recyclers - Golden Apple Award! We are very proud of NEST+m's collaborative efforts on working towards a zero waste school. In January 2016, this K-12 NYC Department of Education school reduced their daily cafeteria garbage from 350 pounds (30 bags) to less than 9 pounds (2 bags) per day by implementing our Cafeteria Ranger Program. Students learned the why and the how of sorting and waste reduction and took on daily leadership roles in the cafeteria.
Ms. Wilen's 3rd grade class also took on dedicated advocacy and action leadership roles, not only to reduce school garbage but, to reduce local land-based plastic litter that becomes global ocean pollution. Thank you to the NEST+m PTA for generously supporting Cafeteria Culture's Arts+Action Zero Waste Schools program at NEST+m!"New Explorations into Science Technology and Math (NEST+m) is unique because it is the only K - 12 public school located in Manhattan. NEST + m collaborated with Cafeteria Culture to jump start its recycling program with the K-5 students as leaders. The strength of this program is that it teaches the whys and hows of recycling and that the K-5 students are very enthusiastic participants." "New Explorations into Science Technology and Math (NEST+m) is unique because it is the only K - 12 public school located in Manhattan. NEST + m collaborated with Cafeteria Culture to jump start its recycling program with the K-5 students as leaders. The strength of this program is that it teaches the whys and hows of recycling and that the K-5 students are very enthusiastic participants." (read more here ->) Cafeteria Culture Executive Director, Debby Lee Cohen (left photo, in center) and Media Director, Atsuko Quirk (bottom photo, waving) were honored to present at the United Nations Headquarters in NYC on Wednesday, June 15th as part of the 17th Meeting of the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (ICP-17) - Marine Debris, Plastics and Microplastics. Our presentation was titled: Partnering with urban youth on upstream solutions, civic action, media and messaging to reduce plastic marine debris and microplastics. We were thrilled to be able to share our plastic pollution reduction efforts with the distinguished UN delegates from all over the world - accomplishments made possible by our partnerships with incredible NYC public school students, teachers, school communities, and government agencies that we have worked with on reducing plastic litter in NYC! Brooklyn 8th grade students have been working hard behind the scenes on The Journey of Plastic Litter. They studied the issues, storyboarded their concepts, created artwork for animation, and did a fabulous job editing with charming sound effects! As part of Cafeteria Culture's Youth Arts + Media for Trash Free Waters Program at MS246 Walt Whitman, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, students from class 804 created a series of short documentary videos on the local and global issues of plastic marine pollution. Watch the Journey of Plastic Litter, the first in the series, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel, CafCu Media! We will be posting new #TrashFreeWaters videos all month long. These shorts with their fresh youth-POV are not to be missed! Get inspired then, take action for #TrashFreeWaters. Action Alert on the NYC #BYObag bill here-> Thank you for watching and sharing! Cafeteria Culture's YOUTH ARTS + MEDIA for TRASH FREE WATERS School Program (2016) has been generously funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2, Sustainable Materials Management Section, CASD. Cafeteria Culture is most appreciative of additional support via our UL Innovative Education Award (2015) and The Fund for the City of New York. Students from our partner schools, MS246 Walt Whitman, NEST+m, Tompkins Sqaure Middle School, and the Earth School, along with students from the Hewitt School, spoke up at City Hall, asking City Council members to pass NYC's Plastic Bag Bill! Let's get this bill passed before Earth Day! (NYC, April 13, 2016 read
A HUGE THANK YOU to City Councilman Brad Lander and Councilwoman Margaret Chin, co-sponsors of the bag bill - INTRO 209A. Thank you to Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, who listened to the informed bag bill opinions of 5th graders from 3 schools in her district during CafCu's roundtable meeting in January, 2015. Thank you to all of partner teachers and principals, who worked with us on the bag bill curriculum, allowing students to debate this important issue. Thank you to our donors, volunteers, and funders! And thank you to Jennie Romer and to all the partner organizations who worked together to get this landmark bill passed, including Citizens Committee for NYC, National Resource Defense Council NYC, New York League of Conservation Voters, BagItNYC.org, NY/NJ BayKeepers, and the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board. Thank you Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Public Advocate Letitia James for your support! UPDATE The plastic bag industry is not giving up and we need you to take action! More on NYC's bag bill here -> |
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