Greenacres Goes Global and Greener for St. Patrick's Day

Perhaps this year St. Patrick's Day got the short end of the stick at Greenacres Elementary School, when it coincided with the PTA's annual spring multicultural luncheon. For some children the luncheon is their favorite event of the year, and judging by the mad rush in the lunchroom this year was no exception.

Families of students contributed over 130 dishes to the luncheon. Entrees and desserts originated from countries as diverse as Iceland, Nigeria, India, Peru, and New Zealand.

The luncheon was perhaps unique in that it might have been the first school wide zero-waste event ever held in the district. PTA Environmental Committee Chair Michelle Sterling explained that, "a zero-waste event is one that uses sustainable practices to send the least possible amount of waste to a landfill. In order to have a zero waste event all items at the event either need to be reusable, compostable or recyclable - which is what we did!" All food was prepared and brought to the event in either reusable or recyclable aluminum trays. Students were given compostable clamshells and compostable birchwood forks for their food. Even the "plastic" cups used for juice and the gloves servers wore were fully compostable. Food scraps, clamshells, cups and utensils went into the compost bin and all non-reusable serving trays were recycled.

Ms. Sterling explained that, "normally at a school wide event such as this (serving about 500 people) we would have generated around 50 large bags of trash. Today we filled our compost and recycling bins but our trash bins remained empty!"

Composting is not new to Greenacres students, who have been doing it at every lunch since late 2014.

By Midori Im and Michelle Sterling