Ditching Disposables Toolkit

To bring in reusable foodware to your school or district you will need a vision, partners, flexibility, time, and dedication. To make this a reality, you will also need a plan. Below, we have outlined 12 steps we think will help you to prepare and complete a plan to bring in reusable foodware. Each step includes some of CEH’s best practices and resources that can help you along your journey.

Every school and district are different and have different challenges. We have included the most common aspects to consider when making your plan. Many schools and districts are not ready to go to 100% reusables, but might be able to shift a single item, such as cups, to reusables. Other schools might not have the infrastructure to break free of single-use, but do not want to use polystyrene. Each of these small steps, which will each take effort to implement, move your school or district closer to eliminating problematic single-use products and maximizing preferable reusables. Having the conversation and meeting with stakeholders opens the door to further improvements. Keep pushing for your goal, and remember, other schools and districts have done it, and yours can too.

Toolkit Contents

This Section:
Planning Guide

12 Steps to Transform your Cafeteria

1. Identify Your Motivation
2. Finding Partners
3. Assessment: Where to Begin and Measure the Problem
4. Outreach: Engaging the School Purchaser
5. Program Design: Picking a Foodware Program 
6. Schedule: Timing and Making a Schedule
7. Stakeholders: Inform the Stakeholders
8. Purchase: Purchasing the Foodware
9. Dishwashing: Dishwashing Model
10. Launch
11. Training & Monitoring 
12. Evaluate & Celebrate

STEP 1: Identify your Motivation

There are many beneficial reasons to encourage a school community to shift to reusables. Certain audiences may connect better with some reasons over others. For example, parents may resonate with the health impacts of moving away from single-use products while janitorial staff may be excited by the reduction in trash created. It is important to keep the target audience in mind when discussing the benefits of moving towards reusable food ware.

• Cost Savings — It can be more cost effective in the long term to purchase reusable foodware compared to single-use items that need to be continuously replaced and disposed of. 
• Environmental Benefits — Switching to reusables cuts down on a large amount of single-use plastic and other disposables which can help the environment in many ways such as reducing carbon emissions and pollution. 
• Easier Waste Management — Sorting waste can become easier as there will be less landfill bags that need to be hauled to the dumpster everyday. 
• Promoting Student Voices — Students want to do something meaningful that will help prevent the Climate Crisis such as reducing plastic and limiting waste. Additionally, getting involved in their school helps students feel empowered. 
• Protecting Student Health — Depending on the type of reusables selected, students can avoid exposure to any number of toxic and unknown chemicals commonly used in single-use foodware which would improve their long-term health. 
• More Variety of Food and Less Food Waste — Reusables allow for a wider and different variety of food to be served (including less processed and packaged food) which can also lead to less food waste. 
• Inevitability — Sustainability is a growing movement with governments, businesses and everyday people looking to reduce harmful impacts on the environment. With more and more legislation being passed to restrict toxic chemicals in products or limit the use of single-use products, it is only a matter of time before these actions trickle into the school systems. Getting a jump start on reusable food service ware puts a school ahead of the curve. 

Personal motivations can serve as a guiding light but keep in mind other stakeholders might have other motivations. As you start partnering with other stakeholders, being well versed in the many motivations can help convince different stakeholders to join the journey towards reusable food service ware.

STEP 2: Partners

Getting schools to move towards reusable food service ware can be a difficult process to do alone. There are plenty of partners who are eager and willing to help so a best practice is to look around the school community and identify organizations or individuals who can be an ally in this work. Some examples of potential allies and stakeholders include:

• Students and Student Green Clubs
• Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) or other relevant school committees, green team, etc
• Classroom teachers
• Specialist teachers (science, garden, environmental)
• Principals – Key Stakeholder 
• Custodians – Key Stakeholder 
• School district sustainability coordinators
• City council members and local government

• School clubs: zero waste, student green team, environmental club, etc
• On the ground school food or nutrition staff – Key Stakeholder 
• Nutrition service director – Key Stakeholder
• School superintendent
• Local environmental groups and organizations
• School board members
• Media

Lastly, the Center for Environmental Health can also serve as a resource, please email [email protected] with any questions, concerns, or insights.

Make the system more robust. Leverage partners.

The school population naturally turns over every year. This is not just the student body graduating, but also teachers, staff, nutrition services, custodians, and parents in the community will sometimes leave as well. It is often difficult to hold onto institutional knowledge and keep environmental and health advocates pushing the school to be better. Sometimes schools will back slide. A cafeteria change cannot fall on one champion, because if that champion leaves, the system will fall apart. Many in the school community need to take ownership of the project. Assigning many different roles to potential champions makes the system more robust.

Examples of Leveraging Multiple Partners:

STEP 3: Assessment

After partners have been found and enlisted, it is time to explore what is feasible at the school or district level. We have provided two questionnaires to help assess where the school is currently at and will help provide information about where the system could potentially go. Only one questionnaire will need to be filled out, either on the school level or the district level depending on the main focus of the project. Some of these questions may not be answered immediately, but the hope is to begin to understand what questions need to be asked and who in the school system may have answers. This is an important step and thorough investigative work during this process can help save time during the later parts of the Planning Guide. Lastly, it is important to keep good relations with all stakeholders, as they will be a good resource during the evaluation phase to see what progress the new program has accomplished.

It is also highly recommended to take pictures of the school foodware and waste at every step in this planning guide. These pictures can often be the most compelling part of the assessment. Photos taken before the switch to reusables can be used to illustrate how much improvement the school or district has made. During the process it is useful to take photos of the items being served at school with the students’ meals, in the trash, and also in the back of the kitchen – if able to be accessed. (The boxes and the SKU# will be handy later).

Additionally, consider taking pictures or even video testimonials of students and staff taking action and celebrating successes at every step, both when the system is new and once it has been established. Visual media is a great way to document the process and show others how far your school has come. (Please note that if you have photos with kids’ faces in them, it is important to get signed photo release forms from their parents/guardians.)

If you are interested in highlighting your school’s progress, CEH is happy to share success stories to our community on social media.

Where to begin?

School champions will usually have a preferred school they would like to work with and have most access to. This is a fine place to start the project, but some schools are going to be much easier to get these projects started than others. In particular, elementary schools (K-5, K-6) will be an easier starting point than middle (6-8) or high (9-12) schools. This is for a variety of reasons including the students being more adaptable to the new systems, students eating in a centralized place, typically a higher ratio of adults to students, and overall a smaller student population making a more manageable project. This also will create a situation where students in the elementaries will already be trained with reusables by the time they graduate to their next school, leaving them primed to participate. The increased mobility of high school students can make collection/recovery of the reusables more difficult – students may be more likely to eat meals spread across the campus or go off site to nearby restaurants.

Overall, smaller schools (and lower meal counts), schools with functioning dish machines and schools already using some reusables are the low hanging fruit for transition. 

That all being said, one of the largest barriers is access to the school, and having connections with a student or Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) in a school is going to get more traction than starting at a school you do not have a relationship with. Still, a notable strategy would be to pilot a nearby smaller school within the district with the expectation that the project will come to the school you might have a student at a little bit later. 

One other note: when working with more mature students, those students can be enlisted to petition the school district for these projects. For example, high school students can help the transition through peer to peer learning, and can also make a strong case around the impacts to their own health and the environment. If you are looking at specific grades, 4th grade for elementary, 7th grade for middle school, and 10th and 11th grade for high school are usually a prime audience. They have been in the system for a little bit, but will not be graduating for at least a year, and can teach younger students about how to use the reusables.  

Measure the Problem

In order to effectively monitor the transition, a baseline measurement of the school’s current conditions must be taken. Some easily measurable impacts of single-use foodware in schools are cost, waste, meals per day, and number of single-use items discarded. While improved health of the students and staff is an important metric, it is tricky to measure over years and decades. Here are a few ideas and resources to measure the impact of the current system:

• Number of times items are used and discarded in a year (the nutrition staff or custodian can help obtain this information)
• Total cost for food service ware (the superintendent or principal can help obtain this information)
• The cost of each individual item that is purchased (the superintendent, principal, or nutrition staff can help obtain this information)
• Meals served per day and how many disposable items are served with them
• Number of dumpster pickups at the school per week or month
• Number of landfill bags generated from the cafeteria in a day from the current system (ask the custodian)
• Before pictures of the school dumpsters
• Weight, volume, and percentage of contamination of a landfill waste bag from the cafeteria

Metrics to measure the student health of the current system:

• Number of times students eat from single-use disposables in a school year
• Number of times meals are served hot on single-use disposables in a school year
• Weight of food being discarded on the single-use foodware. (Students might eat more food off of reusables because it looks better and allows for different serving options. Collecting baseline data on how much food is wasted on the single-use items can start about food waste and also how to improve the lunch system.) 

STEP 4: Engaging the School Purchaser

Switching to reusables at school is not a simple matter of just providing the foodware and having students eat off them. There are components around washing, work hours, and waste that need to be considered as well as training for the students and staff. There is not a one-size fits all approach, and once the school’s lunch system has been assessed, then it is time to reach out to the decision maker about foodware at school. This is typically the nutrition or food director for the district.

The directors are often very busy, particularly at the beginning of the school year (August to October), and their main motivations are around making sure students are fed a healthy meal and keeping within budgets. Having access to them outside of the district’s system is not easy. Having someone with a district email (student, teacher, administrator, sustainability specialist), to do the initial outreach is a best practice.

The Nutrition or Food director is usually familiar with the waste impacts of the school lunches (food waste), but not usually the toxic chemicals of concern found in packaging. Usually, this is the information that would be good to lead in with as rationale for moving to reusables compared to or combined with messages about waste or improving the quality or variety of the meal. 

Getting a meeting with the Nutrition Director to discuss the switch to reusables and potentially toxic chemicals in the school FSW, is a huge first step. To get this, it helps to try volunteering at school lunch (perhaps while doing an assessment) or by having on the on-site staff do an email introduction. The directors often begin work early (6 or 7am) and are off by the afternoon, around 2:00pm or 3:00pm. Typically, the directors are most responsive at 2:00pm on. 

When meeting the director for the first time, be very sensitive to their time and scheduling needs. It is important to build a positive relationship, because this is the person who you will be working closely with to get reusables adopted and sustained at the school or district level. Take the meeting time to tell the director about your concerns around toxic chemicals in food packaging and your interest to help the director explore moving to a reuse system.

A few good questions to ask include:

• What was for lunch today? (This is a good opener)
• How many meals were served at a specific school site, or district wide today? How many lunches?
• Do any of the school sites have a dish machine?
• Has the school used reusables in the past? Do they still have the reusables?
• Is there staff at a particular school site that are new to the district? Are there staff at a site who have been with you a long time?
• Are there school communities who would be interested in reusables at their school?

You want the director to get a sense that this is a good idea/ news story, that there is some money for it, and that it can be achieved and self-contained after some initial work. You also want the director to feel that their hours and their staff’s hours will not be vastly different from before. Lastly, you could use this opportunity to plant seeds for the future, even if the project cannot happen immediately.  

Bring Samples

Having some physical samples of the foodware to show the nutrition director and their staff is another best practice. If they physically hold reusables in their hands, they will almost certainly start visioning what it would look like in their school. This visioning is a key step to disrupt the single-use mindset they might be stuck in. Even having two different trays to pick from would encourage them to consider what type of foodware would work better for their school system. Weight, size, depth, nestability, design and durability are all considerations the directors need to consider, and bringing in physical items really answers those questions without them needing to be asked and also helps begin the visioning. Encourage the director to hold the samples and check with their staff which ones they prefer.   

Outside Vendors

Some schools contract with an outside vendor, which can be both local and national, to serve their students food. These vendors still have purchasers who make the decisions about packaging and so the below talking points still are relevant. The outside vendor will have an added concern about transporting meals and packaging as well, though. Some vendors believe they require individual packaging for meals that are being prepared far from the school site and traveling long distances to reach the students. They also might be invested in the packaging machines as well. Still, outside vendors will respond to their purchasers’ needs or potentially lose customers and moreover they also might be more agile than a school district to move when the school purchaser requests something different. If this is the case for your district, encourage the nutrition director to put in “preference for reusable packaging and foodware” when the directors are going to bid for food and food services. 

What happens if the initial response is “no”?

Some nutrition directors are new to the district or just dealing with too much with their current work to “take on a new project”. In these instances, some concerns regarding feasibility may be coming up. Below are some common concerns or roadblocks and best practice responses that can help pivot the conversation.

Still, the initial answer may be no. This is okay, just starting the conversation is important and a win. Thank the director for their time and let them know you will keep nudging them to consider reusables in the future, and if they are ever ready, they should reach out to you. Let them know you might continue working with students, parents and teachers around the foodware in the cafeteria as well. You have planted a seed, and it still might grow, just a little later than initially planned.

STEP 5: Pick a Foodware Program with the School Purchaser

There are currently three different options that a school can pursue to reduce the amount of single-use food service ware with the ultimate goal being a full roll-out of reusables (which entails 100% reusable, ideally GreenScreen Certified foodware in school lunches). Another option would be a partial roll-out of reusables along with GreenScreen Certified disposables or as a first step, at least “PFAS-free”, this is a good middle ground for a school to reduce the amount of harmful materials found in the lunch space. For schools that have access to a commercial composting facility, the final option is a swap to compostable, PFAS-free materials (that are accepted by your local composter), while continuing work towards reusable food service ware. All schools are different, so the food service administration should customize the program to fit the school’s needs. In addition to the type of roll-out, consideration is needed for the model for washing dishes, with the options including onsite or offsite washing services. On-site washing is a great end goal but some school kitchens are very small thus offsite dishwashing models can be a good short term solution. In the long term, if the school kitchen is getting remodeled, adding dish machines and food service ware storage should be a priority. 

Full Reusable Roll-Out

In this type of roll-out, all the food service ware is reusable and ideally, GreenScreen Certified. Reusable trays, plates, cups, and utensils are cleaned regularly by dedicated staff. There are enough sets for the day–to-day use and a backup just in case. This can be done for the entire school week, but it is also possible to dedicate a single day a week to reusables such as “Reusable Thursdays”. This option can help students and staff get acclimated to the process.

Partial Reusable Roll-Out

In this type of roll-out, a school’s foodware consists of a combination of reusables as well as some single-use items that are both ideally, GreenScreen Certified. This hybrid program allows you to roll out specific items one at a time. For example, single-use utensils and trays could be replaced with reusable utensils and baskets. These items are easier to switch because there’s less of a demand on dish machines. Any single-use boats or trays, cups, and napkins that are in use should be free of PFAS and other toxics. Assuming there is access to a commercial composting facility in your region that will accept foodware, GreenScreen Certified compostable single-use items should be used where appropriate. In this system, students participate in the cleaning and disposal. This can look like a dedicated volunteer group of students or a whole grade helping during meals for students to sort their waste, collect the reusables and assist the nutrition and custodial staff where needed (see the section on forming a Green Team).  Work is ongoing to increase adoption of reusables in the long-term.

GreenScreen Certified and Compostable Single-use Foodware Roll-Out

In this type of roll-out all foodware is still single-use, and ideally GreenScreen Certified (are free of PFAS and thousands of other chemicals of concern). Assuming there is access to a commercial composting facility in your region that will accept foodware, compostable single-use items should be used where appropriate. Students compost each item along with the food waste during lunch. Students only take necessary single-use items for their meal. Work is ongoing to increase adoption of reusables in the long-term.

What about Recycling?

Recycling at school lunch is complicated. There will usually be a variety of materials (aluminum foil, paper, and plastics) that someone has to sort from a school lunch. Training the students can be educational, but the messaging can also be challenging. “Don’t recycle plastics 3-7, but plastics 1 and 2 can be recycled,” or “We cannot recycle the paper from the hamburger wrap because it is food-soiled even though we recycle paper in the classroom,” are messages that are both hard to explain to adults and to a 5 year old learning numbers. The packaging material from home also creates even more confusion around what materials are recyclable. We have seen that unless the waste system is monitored, contamination can be high. Certain standard packaging, like the 8 oz milk carton, can be recycled in certain places if it is source separated, but you need to have a system to pour out any excess milk. Moreover, the recycling hauler for your jurisdiction can change what types of materials they are accepting due to market fluctuations causing remessaging and education. The Center for Climate Integrity published a report in February 2024 about how fossil fuel and petrochemical companies have been pushing false narratives about the viability of plastic recycling for decades to encourage larger adoption of their products. All and all, pursuing recycling at school lunch is worthy, but focusing on reduction and reuse and composting where it is accepted, can be easier to sustain for the students, lunch staff and custodians in the long run. 

Other small steps: Are you including system simplifications?

Some changes do not require huge infrastructure shifts. For example, providing students with utensil dispensers, rather than individually wrapped spork packets is a great way to cut down on waste and disposable culture. If the students have the option to take some items (straws, utensils, napkins, condiments, milk, even trays) it will encourage student autonomy and will allow them to make more sustainable choices. Due to larger constraints, this might be the only current change a school can make in the cafeteria, but if that is the case, it is an important first step, and can lead to bigger and broader changes in the future. 

Advocate for the above programs to fit your schools’ needs. Which items do you want? Which items are essential?

Things to consider when selecting the right foodware program for your school:

Know Your School’s Kitchen

An important factor to consider is what type of kitchen(s) your school or district has. This can determine what type of equipment will need to be purchased.

Centralized Kitchen

• A single kitchen that provides food service to multiple schools in your district
• This requires a transportation system to bring foodware to and from each school for cleaning
• This would include a vehicle and a staff person
• May require food warmers
• Would require a high-capacity dish machine to serve multiple schools with reusables

Decentralized Kitchen

• A kitchen at each school where food prep and dishwashing can occur
• This layout is more straightforward and may not require staff to transport foodware very far
• Could require low-capacity dish machine
• This would require place to store and dry the foodware
• Making sure all the dishware have storage on wheels is important

What if my school is not ready to move to 100% reusables?

While safe reusables should be the long-term goal of every school, it might not be feasible to transition to reusables in the short-term. In those cases, we encourage purchasers to select or ask for GreenScreen Certified single-use foodware – or at a minimum, PFAS-free compostable products may be a viable short-term option, but this option does require the school or district to have access to a commercial composting facility and systems in place to make sure both students and staff are disposing of the products correctly. For advice on better single-use disposables, see CEH’s Purchasers Guide and Single Use Foodware Public Database for assistance in making purchasing decisions for environmentally preferable products:

Useful Flow Chart on Page 17!

Collection

Involving the students and having them collect the reusables is an important step in the process. A typical collection set up includes a collection bin at the end of the waste station. A dish rack on a dolly has also been a very effective collection practice. It is imperative that students are shown best practices to facilitate the behavioral changes, for instance showing students how to stack the trays so that they nest (Using phrases such as “stack your trays like legos” can help reinforce the behavior). Students must also be encouraged to avoid throwing away utensils, typically priming students to put the utensils in the collection bins before the trays can help smooth the process as students are less likely to throw away the trays.

How to Transport your reusables

It is best to have the reusable foodware transported on wheels wherever possible. Regardless of the material, a stack of foodware can be heavy. Using dish rack dollies or carts for both the collection after meals and storage of materials is a best practice for the nutrition staff. Three or four dish racks can be stacked on these dollies and are able to be transported all over most campuses. Instructing nutrition and custodial staff to not directly lift foodware is a good practice and helps ensure staff safety. Dollies typically cost around $100 and it is best to have at least three. It helps to have the dollies clearly marked to ensure that they do not get repurposed in other departments. 

Offsite Transportation (Centralized Model)

A dedicated van or truck for dish collection is essential for an offsite washing system. The offsite system requires two sets of dishes as well, so there will be at least one dirty and one clean set during any given cycle. When the dirty dishes are picked up, the clean dishes are dropped off. Dishes should be loaded and unloaded from the van or truck using a dolly to ensure staff safety. Each school should have its own individual sets. While schools within the same district may all have the same type of trays, it is important to keep the school sets separate to assure proper meal counts and also troubleshoot if there are specific problems at a site. After school pickup and drop offs of the reusables are a best practice, to avoid students, parents and traffic. Additionally, the washers will need to have access to the school after school hours, which may include a key to the kitchen or an outside area of the campus for temporary storage of dirty dishes, and codes for alarm systems.

Are you hiring extra staff or increasing current staff’s work hours?

Setting up a system with reusables may include reallocation of staff hours, staff working additional hours, or hiring additional staff to support the reusable operation. It is important to assess the plan to see how much time will be required for the different areas that will be impacted. Changes may be seen in how the meal items are packed, served, transported, collected, and washed, for example. Finding ways to be as efficient as possible and eliminating obsolete tasks is crucial to reducing the total labor time needed. There are examples from school districts across the U.S. that have switched from disposables to reusables and have seen less time needed for waste handling as well as an elimination of the hours spent on single-use serviceware inventory and management. With food service staff being some of the lowest paid positions in school districts and often holding multiple jobs to make ends meet, it is important to find ways to invest in our school nutrition services employees by providing them with additional hours and hopefully increased pay to fully serve our youth. In some cases, districts have shown savings over a period of time from their switch to reusables, and these savings can be funneled back to covering additional pay to food service staff. Since implementing reusables ends up affecting more than one department, it will also take a partnership and coordination with other staff at the school such as the facilities department.

Understanding the Monetary Costs

It seems intuitive that foodware you only have to buy once, would ultimately cost less than foodware you have to continually purchase. This indeed can be true, especially as you increase the time range you are considering. Still, there can be a number of upfront and ongoing costs that can present barriers to implementation of reusables from single-use, and they are worth identifying and addressing. There are resources and potential alternatives or options to help address some of these costs that we will discuss later as well.

Potential Upfront Costs

• Dishwashing Machine – machine, space renovation, installation
• Reusable foodware Set – usually buy multiple sets (2-3) for redundancy
• Reusable Infrastructure – dish carts, dish racks, collection & waste signage
• Labor – training and hiring dishwasher(s); assessing how many hours of work
• Training Staff – teachers, custodians, and food / nutrition service staff will have to learn and adapt to the new system.
• Training Students – students are quick to learn, but will need time and direction to adjust to the new system. (Establishing the program with the younger students should make implementation with middle and high school grades easier over time.)

Potential Ongoing Costs

• Dishwashing Machine – maintenance, soap, utilities (water and electricity)
• Transportation – if dishwashing occurs off-site
• Labor – dishwasher(s) and potentially van driver (if off-site) staffing
• Buying replacements from wear and tear, and potential item loss

Decreased Costs and Savings

There is also some potential for decreased costs and savings worth identifying and addressing when implementing this new project:

Potential Decreased Ongoing Cost

• Not constantly shopping for, purchasing, unpacking and maintaining an inventory of disposables.
• Storage – Storing 2-3 sets (vs a month or a year worth of disposables)
• Waste Disposal – Regardless of whether or not the school has access to only single-stream waste sorting (landfill) or three-stream waste sorting (compost, recycling, and landfill), the waste from school meals will decrease and be less contaminated. If you are one of 7,000+ communities in the U.S. that are a pay-as-you-throw (also called trash metering, unit pricing, variable rate pricing, or user-pay) community, the waste hauling cost will decrease as well.

Other Savings

• Making your school greener – “Look for grants available for green school projects or specifically for reusables at the local, state and federal levels.” For example StopWaste of Alameda County, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and the EPA all have the grants that can support reuse projects. 
• Improved health and focus of students – If the students eat more, and are healthier, the students will be easier to manage and teach because of improved mood and focus, and less sick days and trips to the school nurse. 

Prices for these products can vary considerably – not just between the different material types but also among manufacturers and brands within the same material-type. As institutional purchasers, schools can often negotiate bulk pricing or look into cooperative purchasing opportunities, including buying off of their state’s foodware contract.

Make a Proposal

Calculate the current costs. This includes more than what the school spends on single-use items in a year. For example, things such as storage and waste fees, staff time spent on the ongoing purchase, and management and disposal of these products. Calculate the new costs. Include buying all the foodware (reusable and/or disposable) and be specific on exact amounts, items, and materials. To be conservative, you may want to assume you will need 1 to 3 sets but this will depend on your set-up and system. Include equipment the custodian and kitchen staff will need (such as dishwashing machines/carts/ dollies/ dish racks). Calculate energy/water/detergent cost and include waste savings if you have access to that data. To understand the entire scope of the project, make a clear comparison chart. In addition, calculate when the proposed roll-out will have a Return on Investment (ROI). If warranted, propose an adjustment to the bell schedule. Remember, ask for everything on your wishlist. You can always make two proposals and have the more modest one as a backup.

STEP 6: Timing and Making a Schedule

Key landmarks need to be mapped out in advance for the Foodware Roll-out. Below is a list and some timing of important mile-markers.

1. 1. Meeting with the Nutrition Director
   2. Stakeholder Meeting 
   3. Optional: Perform Baseline Audit
   4. Foodware Procured
   5. Dishwashing Machine Installed and Functioning
      1. Alternatively, paying an outside vendor to wash off site
   6. Kick-off Assembly
   7. Training and Active Monitoring
   8. Gather Data/Evaluate results
   9. Passive Monitoring
   10. Celebration Assembly

Timing is important with reusable projects and changing systems in the K-12 school cafeteria. Nutrition Directors are very busy with a multitude of responsibilities, particularly at the beginning of the school year. Until about mid-October, they might not have the bandwidth to start a new project. We have found that one of the best times to start conversations regarding reusables is at the nutrition department’s internal back-to-school meeting where Nutrition Directors have all the nutrition staff gathered, which is often about 2 weeks before the beginning of school. If you can get on the agenda of this meeting, you are likely to get the most traction. After mid-October, the back to school push calms down and the directors will have a little more time to work on passion projects, but be aware of school breaks and professional days. Directors also get many requests around Earth Day or Week (mid- April), so make sure to plan accordingly. As directors typically work from 6:00 am to 2:00 pm, correspondence from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm is a best practice. Still, it is regular for the directors to deal with unforeseen logistical problems associated with school meals, such as staffing shortage, transportation issues, and equipment malfunction throughout the school year so they are consistently busy and being respectful of their times and requests is important for building strong relationships.    

ORDERING REUSABLES: Most manufacturers require some lead time for the ordering of the trays. When ordering, it is a best practice to give a month of lead time for the product to be made and shipped. If the manufacturer is overseas then this timeframe is increased to two months.

The utensils can be quicker to procure as most restaurant supply stores have the products in stock. For other foodware, it is a best practice to give a month of lead time.

All school assemblies are a good place to inform the students and staff about the changes. Most folks are excited about sustainability and new items for the school. In our experience, we have seen students cheering for reusables and sometimes even chanting,“Stainless Steel.” Getting these assemblies scheduled can take between 2 weeks to one month, and the principal has to be receptive to the idea. Alternatives include morning announcements or announcements during lunch, but the seal of the principal’s approval helps assure that the new system will be sustainable. It is also best to do an assembly the day of the launch if possible, since the students will be excited from the announcement. 

It is also best not to launch right before winter or summer break, as the students will often forget the behaviors we want them to practice.

For active monitoring during the launch, we recommend someone is on site from the first lunch until the last lunch, with some wiggle room to check in with both the onsite nutrition staff and the custodian. We do recommend 2 weeks of monitoring, but a week is the minimum to ensure everything is working smoothly and any concerns from staff can be addressed. 

The passive monitoring is ongoing and consists of onsite staff reporting if anything is not working as intended. A check-in three weeks after launch should be conducted to solicit feedback from the custodian and nutrition staff. 

The Baseline and After Launch audits are optional, but can be extremely useful in gathering data on the success of the project and even help other schools transition to reusables as well. The baseline needs to be done prior to the launch and the after launch audit is best conducted on the last day of active monitoring.

Note, a lot of schools have different lunch schedules on Wednesday, and also many schools are moving to the 4-day week, so plan accordingly and check your district school calendar and your school sites’ bell schedule before planning a robust timeline.  

Below is a sample two month schedule. This is an example and usually the process takes longer, but it can be reasonably achieved in this time frame when everything is aligned. Schools are also notoriously inconsistent with scheduling, so be prepared to pivot if timelines are not being met.

When you schedule the first all school assembly, it is not unreasonable to schedule a celebration assembly as well. This is optional, but is worth doing. The students, staff and community members have worked hard and it is important to celebrate any wins. This is best to occur after the active monitoring but before the end of the school year. 

LONG-TERM PLANNING: Another aspect of timing to consider is if the school is renovating a space or the kitchen. This is a perfect time to get the school administrators to consider adding a dish machine. At the district level, plans for reusable infrastructure can be incorporated into school sites as part of future renovation or repairs.

STEP 7: Inform the Stakeholders

Schedule the Stakeholder Meeting. It should be about one hour and the principal, school purchaser, custodian, and nutrition service staff should all be present. If the superintendent is available this can be even more useful. This is the person who can say, “We are doing this” with the least amount of push back. Other partners in Step 2 can also help. The Nutrition Director should be fully on board with the plan at this point; if not, further assessment and evaluation of concerns need to occur. Make sure to invite them and encourage them to come. Typical topics to cover in this meeting include proposing the switch, explaining why it is needed, explaining how this can be accomplished, showing them who wants the switch, and then allowing for questions and concerns. Note: The principal is a key stakeholder for the school site and often has the most time constraints, this meeting will need to be scheduled around their schedule. 

The Meeting

Things to bring:

• Clear Proposal(s)
• Assessments
• Cost Analysis
• Schedule
• Sample Case Studies
• Sample foodware
• Optional: Students willing to address stakeholders about reusables 
• This could be videos or persuasive essays or posters.

Things to mention:

• Your Motivation
• Name of Partners and Allies
• Environmental Impacts
• Science around Toxics
• Potential Media Exposure

Things to consider:

• Make sure to have a solid plan, but it can be flexible to the needs of your stakeholders
• Get signoff from all stakeholders 
• Keep open lines of communication – share your email and number + FOLLOW UP
• Set up another meeting if there is not consensus on the project
• Be sure to finalize the project

Most Important: Listen to the Concerns! Make adjustments to address concerns without compromising on core issues.

STEP 8: Purchasing Foodware

Buying foodware items can be a bit of an afterthought, but it shouldn’t be. Declaring your values with your purchasing power is a great way to make changes both locally in your school or district, and also on a larger level to influence manufacturers.

Establish a Relationship with the Supplier

You might be able to get different price points and also customized items for your needs. Be prepared to answer some questions:

• Which supplier did you pick?
• Why did you pick that supplier?
• Will they send you samples?
• How quickly will the items ship?
• How long will the items last?

Complete Needed Purchasing For the Year

How many meals are served in a day that require FSW? For reusables, multiply that amount by 1-3. Plan to purchase 1 to 3 sets, depending on whether the school will have a centralized washing system or maintain the foodware on each site. For a centralized system, 3 sets would allow for a set to be always clean, dirty, and processing. The redundancy will also allow for unseen problems which might arise.

STEP 9: Dishwashing Model (Onsite versus Offsite)

Onsite Dishwashing

Many schools have a variety of dish washing options: with reusable foodware, it is a best practice to have an operational dish machine onsite. Below are a few examples of models of dish machines, their cost and number washes (ie racks) per hour. 

A typical dish machine rack can fit about 10-15 reusable trays on a rack and roughly 50-100 utensils. 

What type of dish machines are best for different-size schools? Here are some different types of dish machines to consider:

Once the dish machine arrives or the kitchen washing protocol is established, the following tasks will need to be assigned before launching the new system:

Who will be the point person(s) on dishes and the dish machine in the kitchen? This point person(s) should be able to:

• Establish a working protocol for dishes to get washed, stored, and utilized daily.
• Ensure quality control of cleanliness for the dishes.
• Enact a contingency plan in case the machine is not working for a day (power outage for example)
• Have a contact number for maintenance, troubleshooting, and malfunction of your dish machine.
• Take ownership of the dishwashing, washing station, and student cleanup areas.
• Note: This person should get paid for this work if it is adding additional hours to their duties.

How much would it cost to install a commercial dishwashing machine? Installation can range from $1000-$100,000 depending on your location and current plumbing. Use the installation calculator below to learn more.

Local city governments’ public services sector will want to know if a school is installing high capacity dish washing equipment and check the plumbing for the site. Public Services are worried about fat oils, grease (FOGs) causing sewage blockage. This is something that needs to be addressed prior to dish machine purchase. Call your local public works department and ask them about the school’s proposal. If the city’s plumbing infrastructure cannot handle a dish machine of a certain size, see what would be acceptable at the school site. 

Offsite Dishwashing

A newer model for washing dishes is Offsite Dishwashing.

Many schools do not have space in their kitchens for a dish machine or even a three compartment sink, so these schools will need to think outside of the immediate school campus for washing options. Offsite washing involves more logistics, at least two sets of dishes per site, and transportation of the dishes. In general, the idea is that dirty dishes are picked up, typically after regular school hours every day to be transported to the dishmachine, washed, and stored until they are delivered clean the next day. 

Within District

Some districts have a high capacity dish machine installed at a central location or a school (high school or bigger middle schools), and serve other schools in the district’s washing needs. This will involve increased labor for the district for someone to wash all the district’s dishes. A new driver and truck might be required as well, but many schools deliver food daily from a centralized location and the dishes can be transported with the food. This is the cheapest option for the school and usually requires the least amount of transportations, since most districts are localized.

Outside of District Mobile Washing Services

Depending on your location, there may be for-profit mobile washing services several such as DishJoy or ReDish which can provide dish washing services priced at a fee per number of dish items to be washed. Much like the offsite washing within districts, these companies will drop off clean dishes, and pick up dirties at the same time and wash them at a centralized location. They can also come during off hours, so the students and staff do not even know it is occurring.  Many municipalities will not have companies available to provide this service nearby, but if the school district is in or near a city, this can be one of the options. One benefit is that staff will not need to be trained on new protocols and additional staff will not need to be hired.  Additionally, washing fees may be at a price point that is not feasible for a school district. Some districts such as Fremont Unified of Fremont, California have employed this model with the aid of grant money to overcome the barrier of a lack of an onsite dish machine. Still they are ultimately planning to install their own dish machine and wash it within the district. For some districts, like Fremont, this solution makes sense to quickly move towards reusables or as a temporary measure until on-site dish machines can be installed. Reusable foodware is a growing market and we expect the number of companies offering offsite dishwashing and logistic services to continue to increase. With an increase in customers and availability of dishwashing services closer to the school or district we expect prices to go down in the future.
Many of the dish washing companies have proprietary food ware items like cups or plates. We want to encourage the dish washing companies to wash items picked out by the nutrition director to best serve the food. We also encourage the district to negotiate washing “by meal” rather than by item, so you can scale up quickly from utensils, to trays, to cups.

STEP 10: Launch

The launch can be announced via a morning announcement, an all school assembly, or even by telling students as they gather for lunch, but the whole school (students and staff) needs to be informed that something new is happening in the cafeteria or lunch area. This section is more geared towards K-5 schools, but it can be adapted to apply to the higher grades as well. CEH recommends dedicating an assembly to this process, but understands that it might not be as productive to the higher grades. Regardless, aim to make the transition fun and interactive! Try to incorporate training for the students and integrate messages from prominent characters in the school community, like the principal or school mascot. This can encourage school pride in the projects and create greater buy-in.

Things to mention in the announcement:

• There is a new change coming to the school
• Why the school community is doing the transition
• Giving appreciation to the custodian and onsite nutrition staff
  • They never get appreciated enough and having them as part of the assembly is a best practice. 
• Optional: Goals
• Optional: Competition
• Optional: Rewards
• Visible achievements
• Optional: Bring out the mascot!
• Optional: Bring out the Principal!

Resource: School Announcement Template

Time Frame:

Give a goal time limit. Two to three weeks is a good length of time to establish a new behavior.

Goals:

Set measurable goals. A goal to “reduce waste” is good but a more specific goal such as “cut waste in half by weight” or “reduce landfill bags from twelve per day to six per day” is better. These clear markers of success result in a greater feeling of accomplishment once achieved. Goals should also be achievable, “reducing waste by 50%” or “saving the school $1000 dollars per year” are typically easily achievable.

Competition:

Competition and school pride are good motivating factors, but they can be tricky. If a whole school district is trying this, you can have each school try to compete. Have many goals, so each school can win something. Reduce the most waste, compost/recycle the most, have the fewest landfill bags or the most student cafeteria volunteers. The most days in a row with reusables. You can try to do it between grades in the school, but we have found this is complicated to track, and we do not want any student to be discouraged from the new program if they “lost.”

Visible Achievement:

Make a poster which can track the goal. Examples include: the amount of landfill bags produced on day 1, day 2, day 3 and so on, or money saved on day 1, day 2, day 3. Number per days/ weeks/ months/ years on reusable meals is also a positive measure to visually document. Make sure that the youngest students in the cafeteria can understand it. We recommend using clear visuals and posters. If multiple languages are spoken in the school community, signs should incorporate the relevant languages, as appropriate.

Rewards:

Students are motivated by prizes so having a prize for participating in the new system, or volunteering to be on the green team, is a great way to get students involved and excited. Incentives do work, but do not make them complicated, and do not make them the sole reason to participate. For example, everyone (who sorted) in the cafeteria gets a pencil. Everyone who volunteered for the green team gets a special button. Reusable lunch bags, metal straws, reusable utensils, or branded stickers are all potential options. Know your audience and what they would want.

STEP 11: Training & Monitoring

Once the announcement of the new system is completed for the school or district, both the students’ and staffs’ behavior will need to change in order to make the system effective. Having point people and peer-to-peer learning is a best practice. We call these point people (students and adults) the “green team” or “ambassadors.” We also find that with the new system comes new infrastructure, and it is best to put signage on this new infrastructure for passive training.

Green Team formation

Make sure there is a Green Team (volunteer) point person. This could be part of your role as school champion, or see if someone else would like to take this on. Custodians often like the extra help and enjoy having a bigger leadership role at the school, so they make great point people.

Setup student/parent/staff monitor

• Train them to direct and advise the students
• Set up a team mentality (Green Team)
• Establish a rotation and a timeline. Will your site only have monitors for two weeks? One month? Forever?
• Encourage them to let students learn the new practice, not do it for them
• Encourage them to be able to explain what they are doing and why it is important
• Appreciate them for their service

Monitoring best practices:

Changing people’s behavior takes time and effort to assure they do not revert to old habits and also feel comfortable while they are learning and potentially making mistakes. When launching a new program at school, like reusables, it can help to bring some extra adults to provide support in the lunchroom. We find that two weeks of active monitoring helps this transition. This is when the monitors (you, teachers, parent volunteers, student volunteers, custodian, etc.) will be doing the big push to change the students behavior. The first 2 days are going to feel slow and chaotic. After the first week, things will start to run smoothly and the monitoring system can be adjusted to fit your school. After two to three weeks of active monitoring and the wrap-up assembly, the hope is the students know the proper steps and the lunchroom staff should be confident in the new system. Monitors can still be present in a more passive role, but should not need to be as hands-on as they were with the previous system. The new program should take care of itself.

The students are quick to adapt to a new behavior. The younger grades (K-2) tend to be a little slower, but grades 3-5 adapt fairly quickly. In our experience, the elementary students are excited about this project, making these sites a good place to start in the district. While 6-8 and 9-12 graders are very capable of returning items, systems need to be in place for more spread out campuses and to assure that the students perform the requested behavior. The monitoring also helps the nutrition staff and custodians to feel supported in the effort. The monitor is usually fielding questions from the staff in real time, and it is important for the monitors to be flexible and troubleshoot problems as they arise.   

Signage

There are also passive ways to change the behavior. We find that signage in and around the lunch area or around the waste stream is a best practice. We encourage age appropriate signage about reusables, the new logistics of the system (i.e. stand in line to throw away waste, stack your tray in the cart) and waste where necessary. Having students make posters is a best practice, but there are also sign makers available including this one produced by StopWaste.

Student volunteers

Student volunteers are great. We find if you get a whole grade on board it will be more effective. If you are in a K-5, consider the 4th grade. They are mature enough to handle directing others in the cafeteria, and they will remember and practice it when they graduate into 5th grade. The curriculum we developed is designed for fourth graders.

For your consideration:

Taking action to make your community and world more sustainable is both fun and meaningful. We want students to enjoy taking part in their school transformation and associate sustainable actions with positive emotions. Helping in the cafeteria should be a privilege and we recommend that being part of a sustainable cafeteria or helping to sort waste should not be punitive. If the students are happy, they will be more likely to succeed and the system you are rolling out will be more sustainable.

Education

Discussing cafeterias and your school’s transition is a great teaching opportunity in the classroom. There are waste audits, environmental lessons, and real-world math computations that are needed and can be done by students even in elementary school. Beginning these lessons before or immediately after the launch is a best practice and will provide memorable experiences. Plus, since all the students have a similar shared experience around the lunch-room and cafeteria, they will feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas.

Updates after monitoring

Allow for system and design updates. Make sure communication from the custodians, lunch monitor, and nutrition service staff is heard and acted upon. It is okay to change up a big part of the plan if something unexpected comes up. Make sure any changes are communicated with the students and staff at large.

STEP 12: Evaluate & Celebrate

EVALUATE

After the launch and monitoring, you will need to see if you achieved your goals. Two metrics to consider are cost savings and waste audits. We would recommend a follow up waste audit about a month after the initial assembly. If you can select a day with similar or the same lunch meal as the baseline waste audit, this would be ideal.

Counting:

Number of meals on reusables for a school is a great measure and fairly easy to calculate. You need the per day meal count for the school and then multiply it by 180 for every school year. If you are doing once a week or just a single grade on reusable, make sure to shift accordingly. For example, a school with 300 meals per day will have 54,000 meals per year if they switch to reusables. Removing the spork kit from the above school would be a reduction of 162,000 single-use plastics and if the kit weighs 4 grams, it would be 1400 lbs of waste reduction a year. 

Measure End Waste

If you took measurements during the assessment, you should take similar measurements to evaluate your progress. Here are a few ideas to measure the financial cost of the old system compared with the new.

• What was the cost of the new foodware?
• How much foodware do you discard with the new system compared to the old?
• When will you have a return on investment?

Here are a few ideas and resources to measure the waste impacts of the current system.

• “After” pictures of the school dumpsters. Compare the before and after.
• Another waste audit. How does weight, volume, and percentage of contamination of a landfill waste bag from the cafeteria in the new system compare to the old system?

Compare the first (baseline) waste audit data against the audit after the school shifted to the new foodware. There should be dramatic improvements if reusables were incorporated in the students’ lunches, particularly for the landfill waste.

• Number of landfill bags generated from the cafeteria in a day from the current system (ask the custodian)
• Number of times the dumpster will need to be picked up from school in a month with the current waste output

Evaluate the program launch. Did it work? Did you achieve your goal? What would you do differently if you had to do it again?

Tell us how your transition went! Report back to CEH

NOW IT IS TIME TO CELEBRATE!

You did it! Congratulations! Take a moment to reflect and appreciate the journey. You can announce the results to the school via morning announcements or another assembly. Make sure to give a shout out to all the stakeholders and allies and recognize any staff or students who played a key role – specifically appreciate the custodial and nutrition service staff. Try to encourage the school actions to ripple into the community outside of the school campus – use it as a launching point for other environmental health, or environmental actions.

Announce to the school their achievement:

• Quantify your success if you can (less cars on the road, will save the weight of 20 elephants from going into the landfill each year, etc.)
• Distribute incentives and rewards
• Make sure to encourage more folks to try out for the Green Team
• Challenge them to do better and go further
• Share it on social media or with local news
• Apply for environmental awards!

Consider these next steps after your launch:

• Setup a stakeholder meeting to discuss successes, challenges, and next steps.
• Invite the media in to see what is happening at the school. Local news loves these stories, sell it!
• Present at a district board meeting. 
• Share it with [email protected], we would love to hear about it!

How does School Purchasing make a difference?

Purchasers have the ability to create transparency and increase the market for environmentally preferable foodware by asking manufacturers and suppliers what ingredients are in their products and whether they have been adequately assessed for toxicity and safety. CEH has co-created a tool – GreenScreen Certified will help you identify single-use and reusable FSW without PFAS and thousands of chemicals of concern, and identify products that promote the use of preferred chemistry.

Conclusion

Setting the long term goals and keeping it sustainable.

The long term goal should be to adopt non-toxic reusables. Many schools and districts are not ready to go to 100% reusables, but might be able to shift a single item, like cups, to reusable. Other schools might not have the infrastructure to break free of single-use foodware right away, but do not want to use polystyrene anymore. All of these steps – whether big or small, help to move your school or district closer to a full scale adoption of reusables. Starting the conversation and meeting different stakeholders opens the door to insist on other changes. Keep pushing for your goal, and remember, other schools and districts have done it, and yours can too.