Wow! Obviously, my kid's school has never heard of this! I visited for lunch the other day and was amazed by two things.
Number one: The number of school lunch trays that were being returned to the disposal window looking like they did when they came out of the lunch line. I'm not sure the kids were eating anything! Surely at least one item was missing from the tray, but I counted four children who only ate the frozen juice bar and nothing else!
Number two: The school uses plastic inserts for food items that are placed on the lunch tray. Now the school has the typical lunch trays that are separated into about six sections for food. Rather than place the food directly into the food compartments on the tray, the workers fill plastic inserts and then place the insert into the sections of the tray. Talk about CREATING waste! Students are taught to "dump" the remains on the tray into the trashcan and then place it in the stack of trays at the disposal window.
In my opinion, if schools want to make strides in reducing the amount of meal waste, they should take steps to improve the lunches offered to their students--to make them more nutritious, attractive and appealing. In a perfect world where school lunches were nutritious, attractive and appealing, fewer parents would have to send lunches, thus cutting down on the amount of disposable waste from lunchboxes. Then if the schools used the trays and utensils as they were meant to be used, (without the inserts I mentioned earlier), the only waste would be the napkins off of the trays because all the students would love the food so much there would be no food wasted. Ahh, the dreams of a perfect world.....
n my soapbox:
Now, concerning the waste free lunch recommended, I would be very upset if my children took their lunch and returned with half eaten food, simply because they were not ALLOWED to throw it away in the lunchroom. I mean, good grief, what if they drop something on the floor accidently? How long did it take you to teach your children that anything dropped on the floor was to go in the trashcan?
Surely, this program is not suggesting the schools go to that extreme are they?
Selling the School?
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