Did you know the average American school kid generates 67 pounds of discarded school lunch packaging waste per school year?From sandwich bags to hot lunch containers, school trash bins, and ultimately landfills, are full to the brim. With Northern California known for taking the lead in many environmental issues, a handful of San Francisco Bay Area schools have made huge strides in reducing their “lunch” carbon footprint.  By switching to 100% compostable clear sandwich bags and school lunch trays made from PLA, a corn derivative, offered by sustainable school foodservice provider Children’s Choice, many schools have been able to reduce waste significantly.  

Based out of Danville, California, Children’s Choice first debuted the new clear sandwich bag and tray with many schools applauding the addition, but with the majority lacking the internal infrastructure needed to implement a true composting program. In April 2008, La Entrada Middle School in Menlo Park, California, became the first Children’s Choice school to take full advantage of the tray by partnering with Allied Waste to develop a pilot composting program that has now evolved into Children’s Choice Green Team.

On the first day of the pilot program, the actual trash produced by 570 lunches was reduced from 20 bags to only one. By the end of the school year, La Entrada had converted nearly 90 percent of the waste from school lunches into six cubic yards of compost per week (6,700 lb per month) and is now creating a district wide “green advisory board” designed to help all schools make more informed environmentally based decisions in the future. 

Now that these compostable products are in place and with the success of the pilot program at La Entrada Middle School, parent lunch coordinators and kids and principals and the 3 thirty-something founders of Children’s Choice are getting the waste management companies to move faster.  Right now in California, schools across the Bay Area are partnering with commercial waste management companies and composting at the schools. Seems that sometimes kids and parents can change the world...one sandwich bag at a time.