Take a recess from plastic in your lunch (or every meal)!!
We McSisters have become huge fans of Cafeteria Culture, an environmental education nonprofit organization. Cafeteria Culture was founded in 2009 as Styrofoam Out of Schools (SOS). Not only did SOS successfully rid all 1800 New York City schools of styrofoam trays, the team (including the students who are featured in Microplastic Madness – see below) successfully advocated for the 2019 New York City ban on styrofoam containers, which led to the 2022 New York statewide styrofoam ban. Cafeteria Culture now turns its attention to ridding schools across the country of single-use plastics.
On April 19, 2023, Cafeteria Culture & the Urban School Food Alliance, representing 18 of the nation's largest school districts, will host the next Plastic Free Lunch Day (PFLD) USA in schools across the country.
Why Have Plastic Free Lunches?
U.S. Schools serve 7.35 billion meals annually. Those meals are packed with non-biodegradable single-use plastics that make a significant contribution to the U.S. plastic waste stream and the staggering global plastic pollution problem. Most of those plastic items end up in a landfill or the environment.
Plastic does not biodegrade but instead endlessly breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, first microplastics, then nanoplastics. These tiny plastic pieces have permanently contaminated our soil, water, and air. We eat a credit card’s worth of plastic each week, and we breathe even more. Tiny plastic particles have been found in human lungs, liver, digestive tract, blood and placenta and in species across the globe. Imagine that amount of plastic in your children.
What is Plastic Free Lunch Day?
The Plastic Free Lunch concept was developed by Cafeteria Culture and a group of New York City fifth graders who, after studying plastic pollution for two years, discovered that their lunches contained a shocking amount of single-use plastic foodware and packaging. In response, the students designed and carried out a single plastic free lunch day that reduced total school lunch waste by 99% and eliminated 558 plastic waste items.
Cafeteria Culture produced a documentary film – Microplastic Madness - about these fifth graders.
Plastic Free Lunch Day is a fun student-led action day to reduce as much plastic as possible and:
A way to protect the environment and student health.
A glimpse of a plastic-free school cafeteria future.
A way to connect with students everywhere who are taking plastic reduction & climate action in their cafeteria.
What can you do?
Support your kids or grandkids to organize a plastic free lunch day. Get your free K-12 Packet of Ready How-to Materials here--everything you need to pull this off! Start now to get your food director and cafeteria staff on board.
Even if you are not connected to schools you can have your own plastic free lunch day at work or home. Be creative.
Create a plastic free lunch day in your community – your church, your fitness class, your kid’s daycare.
Read our pages on Environment and Health.
Read Cafeteria Culture’s press release: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N0Fy8FyS-ERTB_JEVC82tUkI6G4OWbtpRzfcysef4wA/edit
And there’s more: Host a showing of Cafeteria Culture’s award-winning student-led movie Microplastic Madness about the 5th graders at PS15 in Brooklyn. Check out the Microplastic Madness toolkit: https://www.cafeteriaculture.org/microplastic-madness-toolkit.html
