Blog

This year, the theme of Earth Day is “Our Power, Our Planet.” It is a calling for people around the world to advocate for a healthier planet. To not only reduce our own individual carbon footprints, improve our consumption habits, and use less plastic or water – but to also become active in our local communities and all levels of government. To call upon policy and lawmakers to enact strong environmental protections that safeguard our planet for generations to come.

We treat every day as Earth Day at CEH. And that’s why for the last several years, we have been partnering with K-12 schools and districts to help them divert tons (literally) of single-use food serviceware waste from the landfill – and aid in the transition to reusables. Not only is single-use foodware harmful for the environment – it also contains toxic chemicals like PFAS that can be absorbed into the food and beverages that school children consume on a daily basis.

No one wants their child to be exposed to toxic chemicals in the school lunchroom. CEH’s Ditching Disposables Toolkit offers resources and guides to help your school or school district transition from single-use food service ware (foodware) containing harmful chemicals toward healthier and more sustainable options.

This Earth Day, we’re excited to announce a huge milestone. We have now surpassed 1 million meals served in non-toxic reuse in schools in Alameda County, where CEH is headquartered. That’s over 3 million single-use items diverted from the waste stream, which is over 60,000 pounds. To put that number into perspective, it’s the equivalent of 30 tons: the weight of 25 giraffes, 10 pick-up trucks, 6 school buses, 5 elephants, or 1 humpback whale.

And we’re not even close to being done. That’s all the waste diverted from one county, in one school year. Imagine what we can accomplish if even more counties, more cities, and more states adopt reuse in schools and other food service establishments. We’re not alone in this fight. We’ve joined forces with our friends at Plastic Free Restaurants, StopWaste, Upstream Solutions, ReThink Disposable, and Ahimsa to make the reusable revolution possible and attainable for schools. We’re scaling up our Ditching Disposables work to make the transition to reusables realistic, attainable, and achievable for schools. We hope your child’s school will be the next to make this healthy switch!

Here’s how you can get involved this Earth Day

If you’re a parent of a K-12 school-aged child, you could:

• Join the PTA at your child’s school, especially if there is either a cafeteria and/or sustainability committee.
• Bring concerns of toxic chemicals in single-use food serviceware to your school or administration’s nutritionist.

If you teach at a K-12 school, you could:

• Make environmental stewardship a part of your class culture.
• Teach a lesson about waste or single-use plastics. (We even have lesson plans in our toolkit!)

If you’re a student looking to get involved, you could:

• Join or start a sustainability club.
• Work with teachers and your principal to tackle the single-waste problem at your school.
• Perform a waste audit and bring the data to your principal. (Info on how to do this in our toolkit.)

Together, we can make “Our Power, Our Planet” a reality this Earth Day by ditching disposables, and protecting the health of our children and the environment at the same time.

It’s a win-win! So who’s in?