Can we solve the climate crisis without confronting global inequities?
A recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA found that white residents in the USA produce more climate pollution than black or hispanic residents, but black and hispanic people are exposed to more air pollution.
And that is just the USA! Think about the global inequities in the "haves" and the "have nots".
And how are we going to lift people out of poverty without making the climate crisis even worse?
If you are a resident in a wealthy country, is it your responsibility to address both problems at once? And what would that look like in terms of national and international policy?
Environmental Justice >
Reusable lunch trays
Today I had to do an assignment in class and it was about reducing carbon footprint. All day I have been thinking what to do, that's when I thought of it. Do you know how much plastic is being used and thrown away each and every day due to school lunch trays. For this fact I think we should start using reusable lunch trays. The reusable lunch trays will basically just be a materials we can use over and over again for lunch hints the name reusable lunch tray.
Today I had to do an assignment in class and it was about reducing carbon footprint. All day I have been thinking what to do, that's when I thought of it. Do you know how much plastic is being used and thrown away each and every day due to school lunch trays. For this fact I think we should start using reusable lunch trays. The reusable lunch trays will basically just be a material we can use over and over again for lunch hints the name reusable lunch tray. According to cafeteriaculture.org which did an estimation of New York's schools. They found out that NYC public schools throw away 850,000 styrofoam trays a day. All together about 80 trays per foot adding up to a whomping 2 miles high, if stacked on top of each other. They found out that this is 8.5 times the height of the empire state building. It is important to know that this is all just in one day in just one city. Now just imagine how much more this problem would be weekly. Around 4,250,000 styrofoam trays a school week. Now if you take this and use 80 trays per foot, you get 10 miles of styrofoam trays a week that get thrown away. If your worried people won't be interested in helping, a lot of people will be willing to partake in using reusable lunch trays. “We created giant NO-STYRO data PUPPETS, each made of 500 used and washed lunch trays. We took the puppets all over NYC and to City Hall. People laughed first, then heard our story of toxic and polluting styrene foam and were inspired to take action!” STYROFOAM OUT OF SCHOOLS. By reducing the amount of styrofoam thrown away it can help bring justice for the environment by eliminating the amount of trash around the world. Styrofoam also when broken down can be easily mistaken as food for smaller marine animals. This will help the environment in the long term along with other ideas that the new younger generation has, which can help keep the earth going for a long time. https://www.cafeteriaculture.org/foam-t … hools.html
I have seen some videos of 'school lunches around the world' and I noticed that some of them had metal lunch trays. I wonder how easy that would be to integrate into US schools. It seems like it might be expensive to make and install a way to clean them. Is that what you meant by reusable lunch trays?
In my school we are still using throw aways cardboard trays. However i think it would be much more efficient if they used metal or plastic trays. This will lower carbon foot print and save money for other things in the school that provide for students. It may cost a bit to clean but i feel like they could make profit not after a long time.
many people still use plastic bags for their lunches. we should only be using things we can wash and use again for lunches,
I strongly agree because if we use reusable it costs less money and it also helps use less waste for one use trays and it helps the enviornment because there will be way less waste environment
In our school, we have paper trays that get recycled, as in our old school we had reusable ones. The thing with the reusable ones was the staff washes them, but there is still things on it which can be concerning.
At my old school in 5th and 4th grade we switch to metal trays/reusable and we had way less trash!
At my old elementary school we partnered with a company that helps schools get metal lunch trays and utensils. Sadly, I cannot remember the name of the company. The lunch trays were really cool, and made of metal so we could wash them. After you were done with lunch you would put the tray and utensils in a bin and the school would take them to a company that cleans the utensils and trays for schools. I highly recommend talking to your principal about this. With some hard work and lots of determination this can become a reality.
my school uses paper trays at my house we use only glass but my school only uses paper every day their are thousands of paper trays cause they use more trays for the food so they have double trays for each person if you ask me that's a lot of paper used in one day alone