We came up with some really good reasons why we should not have so much rubbish in our lunch boxes and then we had some great ideas for reducing the amount of rubbish collected at school.
Our goal is to see if we can eliminate chippy packets altogether from school.
Hi Nicki,
ReplyDeleteA lot of this stuff is far more an environmental toss-up than "rubbish is bad" would suggest. Putting stuff straight into lunch boxes means that the lunch box needs washing in the evening, using electricity + water + soap. Same for putting crisps into reusable containers rather than the disposing of the chippy packets in the trash.
There's a really good case for teaching the kids to make sure their rubbish gets into the rubbish bin and doesn't blow around the school. But I do worry that "let's abolish throwing things away, even if it leads to way more soap and hot water use that nobody's thought about" could yield environmental harms, even leaving aside the value of Mom and Dad's time in washing up all those containers.
I have lectured on this stuff in my Econ 224, Economics & Current Policy Issues, course at Canterbury. I can come in and talk with your students about it if you'd like.