Plastic-Free Lunch? It Happened At NYC Schools This Week

NEW YORK CITY – New York City schools participated in the fifth biannual Plastic Free Lunch Day earlier this week, as part of a growing national effort to eliminate single-use plastics in school cafeterias across the country.

The week-long national initiative (each district selects its own day), which ran from Nov. 18 to 22, is spearheaded by Cafeteria Culture and the Urban School Food Alliance (USFA). It aims to reduce plastic waste while fostering environmental awareness and student agency.

Plastic Free Lunch Day was launched in New York City by Cafeteria Culture – an environmental education nonprofit – and fifth-grade students from P.S.15 Patrick F. Daly Magnet School of the Arts in Red Hook.

The program began with a student-led cafeteria audit and inspired the 2019 documentary “Microplastic Madness.” Since its inception, over 3,000 schools in 36 states – and Washington, D.C. – have adopted Plastic Free Lunch Day practices.

NYC Charges Ahead

New York City – home to the nation's largest public school district – leads the way, with 750 of its 1,800 schools conducting a Plastic Free Lunch Day every three weeks. These schools have significantly reduced their use of single-use plastics, eliminating millions of pieces of plastic from waste on just 20 Plastic Free Lunch Days.

School cafeterias, the second-largest institutional meal service in the United States after the military, serve 7.1 billion meals annually, often with five or more single-use plastic items per meal. That includes packaging – which accounts for most of these pieces, according to Cafeteria Culture – as well as utensils and food ware, like straws and cups.

"Students at P.S.15... saw that plastics were harming our environment and that the cafeteria could be a catalyst for meaningful change," said Chris Tricarico, senior executive director of the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services, in a statement. “It brings us great pride and joy to see our students inspire a national movement to create a more sustainable future.”

New York City’s schools are the first USFA district to adopt the initiative every three weeks rather than biannually, setting an example for districts nationwide.

The effort also produces meaningful cost savings, with every 100,000 meals reducing expenses by approximately $8,000. Furthermore, preliminary data from Cafeteria Culture studies demonstrates that students eat more and waste less when packaging is minimized. The organization plans to repeat these studies to confirm results.

‘We’re Doing Actual Waste Reduction’

Plastic Free Lunch Day grew out of a successful campaign to eliminate Styrofoam from New York City’s schools, which Cafeteria Culture also led.

The current effort is just as ambitious, explained Cafeteria Culture executive director Atsuko Quirk, who emphasized the change-making nature of the program.

“We're not just diverting plastic to be recycled, we’re doing actual waste reduction, and we’ve proven that it's possible to do that in the largest school district in the country,” Quirk told Patch.

For more information about participating in or starting Plastic Free Lunch Days, visit PlasticFreeLunch.org or contact Cafeteria Culture at info@cafeteriaculture.org.