Some school districts are pushing the envelope on recycling.
Michael Wines wrote for the NY Times in December, “Nothing seemed special about the plates from which students at a handful of Miami schools devoured their meals for a few weeks last spring — round, rigid and colorless, with four compartments for food and a fifth in the center for a carton of milk.
“Looks, however, can be deceiving: They were the vanguard of what could become an environmental revolution in schools across the United States.
“With any uneaten food, the plates, made from sugar cane, can be thrown away and turned into a product prized by gardeners and farmers everywhere: compost. If all goes as planned, compostable plates will replace plastic foam lunch trays by September not just for the 345,000 students in the Miami-Dade County school system, but also for more than 2.6 million others nationwide.
“That would be some 271 million plates a year, replacing enough foam trays to create a stack of plastic several hundred miles tall. …
“Compostable plates are but the first initiative on the environmental checklist of the Urban School Food Alliance, a pioneering attempt by six big-city school systems to create new markets for sustainable food and lunchroom supplies.” More here.
Apart from what the initiative does for school budgets, what it does for the environment, just think how educators are setting an example for children about working to find solutions to problems. Impressive.
Photo: Joshua Bright for The New York Times
Kindergartners in Manhattan being served lunch on plates made from sugar cane, which are expected to replace plastic foam trays next year in six districts.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Whatever happened to plates? They have been using styrofoam? If I was dead, I would have rolled over in my own grave! This sounds like a vast improvement!
Good question. Plates are more environmental. Maybe it was cheaper not to have to wash and stack things? I was at the doctor yesterday, and you know they have given up cloth johnnies for checkups. The johnnies are paper and get thrown out in minutes. But I think an environmental case may have been made about the wastefulness of hot water and bleach after using cloth johnnies a couple minutes.
At least cloth is recyclable and doesn’t require us to import petroleum.
Reblogged this on Wood's Earth and commented:
The power of people working together to change the system
I wonder whether schools weren’t even better off using washable china and utensils.