The CafCu team and friends gathered April 19th to accept the EPA Region 2 Environmental Quality Award.
Dear Friends, WE HAVE SO MUCH GREAT NEWS! - NYC School Food and 5 of the largest US school districts announced a new school food alliance to co-purchase higher quality trays and food while driving down cost. This 6-city purchasing power will eliminate 2.9 million plastic foam trays used per day, replacing them with biodegradable ware! - Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a citywide ban on all plastic foam to-go containers and cups in NYC! - And, just in time for Earth Day, Cafeteria Culture will receive a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Quality Award!! We are thrilled to be recognized by the EPA for contributing significantly to improve the environment. We thank everyone who has helped us to achieve this amazing success. After four years of catalyzing innovative pilots, educating school communities, creating cutting edge media, taking giant puppets to the streets, and plain ol’ persistence,we are closer than ever to completely eliminating toxic and polluting plastic foam food containers from our schools, our incinerators, and our lives! ARTS+ACTION Cafeteria Waste Reduction At PS 20 in Manhattan's Lower East Side, we trained student Cafeteria Rangers, who reduced their cafeteria garbage bags from 14 to 4 on the very first day! Stay tuned for our multi-media Toolkit. We are working very hard, so we can share our successful program with all schools ASAP. With sincere gratitude,
The CafCu Team Debby Lee, Atsuko, Diana, Brianna, and Josh Great news! EPA, Region 2 has selected Cafeteria Culture as one of their Environmental Quality Award winners for 2013. We are sincerely grateful for the honor. Each year, EPA recognizes those who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to Excerpt from award announcement letter.
You can learn more about EPA Region 2 and the Environmental Quality Award at EPA.gov The ARTS+ACTION Cafeteria Waste Reduction Residency at PS 221 has been a huge success! Here are a few pictures of the amazing creations 5th graders have been working on over the past few months. More pictures and a video coming soon!
Today the CafCu team is in Crown Heights Brooklyn with students at PS221. 5th graders are continuing work in CafCu's ARTS+ACTION Program, where they are about to start construction on puppets made from used plastic foam lunch trays. This project is especially timely, because the school does not currently have a full-time art teacher due to budget cuts. In the photo, a student explains her puppet design idea to the class. Students' design presentations follow a group socratic discussion that explores why plastic foam is good and why it is bad, as well as the life cycle of plastics. Their discussion lead to the creation of several anti-hero charaters, expressed by one student as a split-faced design, called "Dos". She tells the class that the two sides represent the good and bad aspects of using plastic foam in the cafeteria. Puppet design and construction is an amazingly interdisciplinary project. On top of bridging the divide between climate change and cafeteria waste, this program utilizes art, personal expression, language arts, data analysis, and personal ethics. Students are developing teamwork skills, listening to others, and making memorable connections to ELA and math. Go PS221! Stay tuned for more updates about the ARTS+ACTION Project. Two weeks ago, I asked a 5th grade class in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, “ Can anyone give an example of a Change Maker in their own family?” One student proudly told how he recently taught his mother to recycle. A second student explained how she convinced her father to set up a recycling station at home, sharing with him why this is important for the world. A third student shared a similar story, thrilled that he sold the idea of recycling and waste sorting to his grandmother! We are impacting children’s lives! Our ARTS+ACTION Cafeteria Waste Reduction program is empowering students to be citizen problem-solvers, design detectives, and environmental leaders, the skills needed for ensuring innovation of climate smart solutions. We are creating an environmental education model for NYC and the nation. Due to recent budget cuts, these 5th graders have no art teacher and are soaking up this opportunity to be creative and to be a part of meaningful change! Our ARTS+ACTION curriculum has double the meaning. -Debby Lee Cohen, Director Debby Lee Cohen talks Flip, Tap, Stack. Right now, we are leading our ARTS+ACTION Cafeterira Waste Reduction program at PS 221 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, training K-5th graders to be the Cafeteria Rangers. These student stewards oversee all cafeteria recycling and composting! We are also teaching our Make Change Messaging workshop to 5th graders, whic is especially meaningful at PS 221. Due to budget cuts, this school has no art teacher. Students are designing prototypes for new school lunch tray and will soon be constructing giant puppets based on data collected from their own cafeteria! Our program is not only generating school wide excitement for environmental stewardship, but is also providing students with the opportunity to creatively make change! But, we have only received half the funding for this program. Your tax-deductible donation will have an immediate impact! With your generous support, we can teach our ARTS+ACTION program at more schools, and complete our multi-media ARTS+ACTION TOOLKIT to share on-line for all schools to benefit from. This past spring, with stunning results, Cafu piloted our Cafeteria Waste Reduction Project at the Neighborhood School and PS 63 in the East Village. Within several weeks only, we empowered students to be the Stewards of their cafeteria and facilitated an arts-based messaging workshop, resulting in a reduction of cafeteria garbage from 9 bags per day to a mere ¾ ‘s of a bag per day. ALL food waste was composted locally, completely eliminating the need for polluting trucks to haul food waste and reducing NYC’s out-of-state landfill bound garbage, waste hauling costs, and green house gas emissions! Thank you to all the students and staff at both schools for supporting this effort and to East 12th Street's Children's Garden for helping us to make local food composting a reality! NYC Department of Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty recently announced plans to expand a Compost Pilot Program to 20 public schools in the fall! This great news came at a ceremony honoring D3 Green Schools and District 3 School Food and Custodial staff, who participated in a D3 Composting Pilot, a result of a private-public partnership that was initiated by Cafeteria Culture (CafCu)/SOS! In September 2011, CafCu suggested a public school cafeteria-composting pilot to IESI and introduced the private carting company to public school parents through our EPA hosted info-sharing meetings. A successful pilot was born! The D3 Composting Pilot resulted in the diversion of 450 pounds of food waste per day from our landfills, reducing cafeteria garbage by 85%! Manhattan schools PS 89 -The Liberty School and PS 40 also participated in IESI tray composting pilots, dramatically reducing their school cafeteria landfill bound garbage.
THANK YOU parents from D3 Green Schools, PS89, and PS 40; students and school staff from all participating schools; IESI; EPA Region 2; Global Green; and NYC Department of Education Offices of SchoolFood, Sustainability, and Facilities. IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO MAKE CHANGE! On Monday, April 30th the CafCu Team took the No-Styro puppets to the steps of City Hall, where we captured the attention of four City Council Members (and NYC government, including the Mayor's Office of Long Term Planning) on the issue of eliminating plastic foam trays in NYC schools!
During the morning's press conference, City Council Members Brewer and Lander introduced Resolution 1313-2012 calling to make school food healthier. The resolution includes the line: "Whereas, The Roadmap also calls for reducing the food and packaging waste stream through more effective recycling, composting, and by working towards the elimination of polystyrene foam trays;" Please call, email and visit the office of your city council member. Ask them to support this important resolution, 1313-2012. Be certain to tell your City Council Member that you want polystyrene lunch trays eliminated from all NYC DoE school cafeterias. This is very important time to gain citywide support for waste reduction! Read the full text resolution on the City Council Database. On Earth Day, April 21st, the No-Styro Puppets and the CafCu team walked from the 6th Street Community Center to Union Square, where we talked with many people about the effects of styrofoam on the environment. From Union Square we took the subway to Grand Central Terminal and made a huge splash in the great hall. After a quick stop in Bryant Park, we headed to the Javits Center and the Green Festival NYC. Thanks to all those who tweeted and took photos along the way.
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