Kids say no to plastic lunches
Youngsters taught how to help save the planet at school and kindergarten
Griffin Ellis is used to taking his lunch to kindy without any packaging. And any rubbish he creates goes back home in his backpack.
The 3-year-old is part of the impact-making generation being raised waste-free.
At his kindy in Milford, Auckland, there is a compost bin for food scraps, fruit trees, and a vege patch the children look after and eat from, and no general rubbish bins.
It’s the same for his older brothers’ schools; Alex, 9, at Milford Primary and Lewis, 13, at Kristin School.
As supermarkets move away from single-use plastic bags, the spotlight is on other land-filling products.
Many schools are banning prepackaged food or require students to ● ●
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take their lunch rubbish home.
At home, the boys’ mother, Abbey Ellis, said the schools’ environmental policies had made her shop differently. She buys fresh food, yoghurt and snacks in big packets and uses lunchboxes with compartments.
“The zero-waste policy is enforced, so Griffin is growing up with it,” Ellis said.
Milford Kindergarten head teacher Amanda Bowen said the green philosophy was supported by the kindy’s membership in the Enviroschools programme.
A third of all schools and kindergartens — more than 1150 schools and 250 kindies — are in the programme, which focuses on creating a healthy, peaceful and sustainable world by learning from nature.
“We have rainwater tanks and one of them is linked to a hand pump in the sandpit that children can use for play,” Bowen said.
“In summer when the water starts running out they realise they can’t just waste it. It’s a lesson.”
The children harvest seeds from fruits and veges they have grown for the next season. Soil is improved with fertiliser from the worm farm and compost from bokashi bins.
At enrolment time, parents are told about zero waste and given ideas about how to keep their children’s lunchboxes waste-free.
Zero waste is also supported at Gladstone School in Mt Albert, which has a group of “Eco-Warriors” who tend the garden and promote recycling and sustainability.
The school installed solar panels on the hall roof a year ago: “We have an app and we can see that 20 per cent of our power is coming from the solar panels. That’s $8000 that can go on other resources,” principal Dave Shadbolt said.
Lynley Edwards — aka The Lunchbox Queen — said her webbased business was booming. There was high interest in leak-proof lunchboxes with compartments.
Edwards surveyed customers on her website and found a groundswell of eco-friendly policies at schools and kindies. They included bans on plastic bags, only water for drinks, bans on packaging, and pupils required to take rubbish home.
Beeswax wraps were growing in popularity, Edwards said, as were silicon bands that kept sandwich wraps together and eliminated the need for tin foil or plastic wrap.