Video Presentation
Description
Cafeteria Culture (CafCu, founded as Styrofoam Out of Schools) works
with youth to creatively achieve zero waste/ climate smart schools
communities and a plastic free biosphere. We teach innovative
environmental education that fosters youth-led solutions by merging
citizen science, civic action. video production and the arts.
Students in our programs, overwhelmingly from lower income communities
of color and living in public housing, are providing an urgently needed
voice to our City’s plastic free and climate movement. By partnering
with School Food Directors and students, we catalyzed the elimination
of styrofoam trays from New York City schools.
Founded in 2009 as Styrofoam Out of Schools, we catalyzed the complete elimination of polystyrene (or styrofoam) trays from all NYC schools, resulting in the diversion of more than half a billion styrene foam trays per year from landfills, incinerators and student meals in a total of the 11 largest US urban school districts. Our student-led Cafeteria Ranger program, a free online resource, has paved the way for achieving zero waste cafeterias and our new goal, to achieve totally plastic-free school lunches, is revving up!
NYC public schools had been throwing “away” almost 4,250,000 harmful styrofoam trays per week. Over the past 20 years, that added up to well over 3 BILLION toxic and polluting styrene foam trays, used for 20- 30 minutes only then exported out of state to landfills and incinerators
These polystyrene plastic foam trays were disproportionately used by low income children, who eat up to 3 meals per day for as many as 13 years with hot food served directly on the tray. NYC is the largest school district in the US (double the size of L.A.), servicing 1.1 million students with 80,000 teachers and thousands of additional personnel. Seventy-five percent of the 850,000 meals served per day are free or reduced.
Within one year, collaborative efforts resulted in "Trayless Tuesdays" across all 1700 NYC public schools. That initiative alone resulted in the elimination of 100 million styrene foam trays from school lunches, incinerators and landfills with no additional cost to the City.
Now called Cafeteria Culture (CafCu), our organization has built strategic coalitions, resulting in the 2013 decision to completely eliminate polystyrene foam trays from all NYC schools. As of the fall 2015, New York City's agreement to co-purchase compostable plates with the 10 other largest U.S. school districts, catalyzed by CafCu's unstoppable grassroots efforts, has driven down cost of a compostable plate and diverted an impressive 1/2 billion polystyrene foam trays per year from landfills, incinerators and school lunches in schools across the US!
