Honeybun’s school has a “Waste Free Wednesday” program in which students get rewarded with a pin for any Wednesday they have no trash in their lunch. They are trying to encourage reusable items over plastic bags, paper napkins and brown paper sacks. I’m all for the re-usability and 90% of the time the only trash Honeybun has in her lunch in a Gogurt (she has a reusable water bottle and I always send her food in plastic containers with a reusable fork or spoon).
I gave up on trying to be “waste free” because 1) the one day I did it, she didn’t get the stupid pin and 2) I give her Gogurt in place of milk which I freeze so it is still cold by lunch time. The one day I gave her regular yogurt I had to pack it with an icepack (umm, chemicals anyone?) and I still had the trash at home. So why bother?
But really upsets me is field trips. Last Thursday, the day after “Waste Free Wednesday” she had a field trip and her ENTIRE lunch had to be able to be thrown away, for convenience. What is that teaching the kids? Recycling is good, but only when it’s easy and/or convenient? I did my best to make excess trash, sending things that were already packaged (pears, Gogurt, cucumber, a crab stick and fruit and vegetable juice that I had to remove the label from so she didn’t get made fun of for having “baby juice”) instead of putting things in plastic zip bags (I wrapped the cucumber in a small piece of saran wrap), but still…
