NYC Green Schools

The Green Cup Challenge (GCC) is a national inter-school energy-conservation competition designed to reduce schools’ electricity use.  161 schools competed nationally in this year’s GCC and the winner was PS 166, a public elementary school on New York’s Upper West Side.   In just 4 weeks (from January 15 – February 12 at peak winter energy use), PS 166 reduced its energy consumption by 17.75%.  Ozgem Omektekin, the Department of Education’s Director of Sustainability says, “The school saved $1,845 on its electricity bill (15,380 kilowatt hours) and prevented 20,609 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) from being released into the environment.”  A carbon calculator was used by Katy Perry, the GCC’s Program Director, to assess PS 166’s impact, and she found that PS 166’s energy saving was equal to taking 2 cars off the road for one year, planting 10 trees or replacing 374 incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents.  And the school accomplished all this is just 4 weeks!

What extreme measures did PS 166 take to win?  As it turns out, none.  They posted signs reminding everyone to turn off unnecessary lights, to set thermostats to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, to power down computers, and to close windows and doors.  Custodial staff turned off heat and boilers at night.  Although no extreme measures were taken, a little vigilance and visual incentives were required.  A Green Team comprised of parents, science teachers, and 5^th grade “Climate Captains” walked through the school every Wednesday to see how people were doing.  Parents and teachers received weekly communiqués about the school’s progress.  And a large 3-D “Powerometer” was displayed in the school lobby to show whether meter readings were going up or down.

And by turning off lights, powering down computers, setting thermostats to a comfortable 68 degrees, PS 166 was able to reduce its energy consumption by nearly 18%.  And, perhaps more importantly, the kids learned about the impact their behavior has on the environment.  Emily Fano, Co-Chair of PS 166’s Green Committee and coordinator of the school’s GCC, said she received numerous emails from fellow parents who said their children were now turning off lights at home.  Imagine if the 1,600 public schools in New York City took the Green Cup Challenge and reduced their energy consumption by nearly 20%.  Think of the numbers of trees we would be planting or cars we would be removing from the road.

We hope educators and parents will be inspired by PS 166’s example and take the simple steps listed above to reduce their energy consumption.  But relying on people’s altruism is not quite the same as instituting a policy that will guarantee success.  We discovered that The Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) pays the utility bills for the New York City public schools.  We’d like to propose a policy whereby the money a school saves on its electric bills is given to the school.  Such a policy would not only give schools a huge incentive to reduce their energy consumption, it would also give our city schools money they need at a time of severe budget cuts.  Opportunities to raise money for our schools that do not cost our government anything which also help to fight global warming are few and far between.  The Mayor should seize this idea and make it happen.

When we joined the Wellness Committee at our schools, we were concerned parents with the simple agenda of wanting to improve the food in our school cafeteria.  We never dreamed we’d become ardent food activists meeting with PTA Presidents, community boards, non-profit organizations, and other impassioned food mamas about how to change the food system in our public schools.  But thanks to Chancellor Regulation A-812 banning the sale of home-cooked foods in our schools while allowing the sale of Doritos and Pop-Tarts instead, that is what we’ve quickly become.

Since our bake-in rally protesting the regulation in March, NYC Green Schools has been on the ground advocating for a repeal of the ban on the sale of home-cooked food at PTA president council meetings, community board meetings, and community education council meetings.  We are happy to report that Community Boards 1, 2, 3 and 7 in Manhattan have all passed resolutions urging the Department of Education to repeal the ban.  Their resolution will be presented at the Manhattan Borough Board Meeting this Thursday, May 18^th, where the rest of the Manhattan community boards and Borough President Scott Stringer can learn about the resolution.  Last week Community Board 6 in Brooklyn also passed a resolution asking the Department of Education to repeal the ban, and we’re confident their resolution will be brought to a borough board meeting as well.

What are the role of community boards in the political process?   That was our question when Community Board 2 in Manhattan invited us to speak about Regulation A-812.  While the Department of Education can willfully ignore resolutions passed by community boards, our elected officials cannot.  Resolutions passed by community boards signal to our city council members and borough board presidents that there’s broad support for a measure, prompting our elected officials to then put pressure on our Mayor and Chancellor to honor, or at the very least acknowledge, the will of the people.  In short, New York City community boards are a vital part of the democratic process ensuring that our city government is run by and for the people.

NYC Green Schools is continuing to broaden our coalition of parents, educators, community boards and community education councils, because we’ve learned that the only way we’re going to genuinely improve the quality of the food and, for that matter, education in our public schools is by coming together as parents, educators and citizens and demanding change.  Before Chancellor Regulation A-812, this idea of building, dare we say it, a people’s movement would have seemed too abstract and daunting; but these last few months we’ve come to understand these words by the great historian and activist Howard Zinn:  “And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Although Debby Lee Cohen asked her children every day what they ate for lunch, it never occurred to her to ask them what their school lunch was served on, and so, like most New York City parents, she remained blissfully ignorant.  A trip last spring to the Climate Change exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, however, changed all that.  At the exhibit her seven-year old daughter stood staring at a diorama of a life-size polar bear standing on a melted island covered with trash.  Finally, her daughter turned around and announced that she would no longer buy school lunch in order “to save the polar bears.”  And that’s how Debby Lee Cohen discovered that in New York City school lunches are served on Styrofoam trays.

Read our interview with Debby Lee, a teacher at Parsons The New School for Design, to find out the health and environmental hazards of using Styrofoam and what you can do, as a parent or educator, to get rid of the Styrofoam trays at your school.

Why are you so determined to get rid of the Styrofoam trays in our schools?

Tell Your Children NOT to Scrape Their Trays With Their Sporks!

Styrofoam (polystyrene) trays are the worst kept secret in NYC schools.  NYC schools use 850,000 trays per day, which amounts to 153 million trays a year!!  They are terrible for our children’s health and for the environment.  Some children eat 3 meals a day directly off of these trays, which are made up of the chemicals benzene and styrene.  Styrene, a possible carcinogen, leaches into hot foods and has been linked to central nervous system disorders such as headaches, fatigue, depression, and hearing loss.  NY State passed legislation banning toxic cleaning products in all schools.  Parents should demand toxic-free school lunches as well. We should not be taking risks with our children’s health.

If that’s not bad enough, polystyrene is a petroleum-based product which stays around for centuries, if not longer, taking up an enormous amount of landfill space.  Solid waste adds a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

Why then are we still using Styrofoam?

Styrofoam is cheap, extremely lightweight, and insulates well. In fact, the price per tray just came down from 4 cents to 3 cents!  Most of the available alternatives, such as biodegradable sugar-cane trays, cost much more.  And although prices of alternative disposables are slowly coming down due to increased demand, the prices are not coming down fast enough to make the change that is needed.

How did you make the transition from an informed, angry Mom to an activist?

A few weeks after I discovered our children were eating off of Styrofoam trays, I had the opportunity with my Parsons 3D students to create am installation out of used Styrofoam trays.  I was in school cafeterias pulling out hundreds of dirty trays from the trash and realized that a significant number were barely used.  My initial thought was why don’t we have a “don’t need, don’t take policy” in place. This would not only reduce the number of trays thrown out but would save the city money. For example, if a student only buys a sandwich and a drink, they don’t really need a tray.

I started making phone calls everyday, looking for some organization that was dealing with the tray issue.  Although I found some amazing individuals, like parent Helen Greenberg, who were working hard to make change within their own school, there was no group working on trays as a citywide issue. I wondered if parents of children receiving free and subsidized school lunch had a clue about the harmful effects of Styrofoam trays.

I was already in discussion with another parent and web designer, Robin Perl, about creating a website on climate change. We saw the tray issue as a solvable problem.  Robin designed an effective site along with quotes from doctors at Mt Sinai and NRDC, which gave us credibility. We sent out emails and petitions to everyone we knew and our organization, Styrofoam Out of Schools (SOS) was formed.

You’ve succeeded in bringing TRAYLESS TUESDAY to our schools?  Can you describe what TRAYLESS TUESDAY is and how you made it happen?

Robin Perl and I, along with fellow Parsons teacher and product designer, Jessica Corr, and parent Helen Greenberg, asked for a meeting with Eric Goldstein and other SchoolFood directors. We agreed in the meeting to find ways of reducing tray use with Jessica Parson’s class working in a school cafeteria. Out of this class, the idea of TRAYLESS TUESDAY, a trend that was already taking place on college campuses, was born and proposed to the Department of Education.  They agreed to try it out and as of March 2010 all NYC schools participate in TRAYLESS TUESDAY, which reduces the use of Styrofoam trays by 20%, or 850,00 trays per week.

Paper Boats Stacked for Recycling Bin

Right now Parsons students are designing posters to support TRAYLESS TUESDAY and to improve cafeteria recycling.  Unfortunately, these posters will not arrive in schools until the fall.  In the meantime, we need parents and administrators to explain to staff and students what TRAYLESS TUESDAY is all about and why it’s such an important movement for our schools.

How are you working to get rid of Styrofoam trays the other four days of the week?

The first step is to use recyclable paper products on pizza days and all other days and meals that do not have a saucy component. SchoolFood is already purchasing paper boats (what looks like a paper hot dog tray but larger), which they will substitute for the Styrofoam trays for all breakfast meals and soon for pizza days as well.  SchoolFood director, Stephen O’Brien, is dedicated to making this change happen.

With the support of SchoolFood, our legislators, and the Mayor’s office, we need to begin piloting alternative trays and systems in order to find solutions which do not threaten our children’s health while also significantly reducing our carbon emissions.  This will take true collaboration involving many parties. We need to bring DSNY, manufacturers, cafeteria and custodial unions, the recycling mill managers, the Department of Heath, legislators and the DOE together to formulate a viable long-term plan.

It is also time to make the elimination of Styrofoam a national movement.  By increasing demand for alternative products, we can bring the price down on a national level.  NYC should partner with other large east coast cities and counties to increase buying power.

Schools can substitute their Styrofoam trays for biodegradable sugar-cane trays or reusable, washable trays if they have a dishwasher.  How many schools are no longer using Styrofoam trays?  What should a parent do if they want to get rid of the Styrofoam trays at their school?

I would first encourage parents to attend their school’s Wellness Committee meeting and ask that the paper boats be used instead of Styrofoam whenever possible. If their school does not have a Wellness Committee, go to NYC Green Schools and find out how to get one started.

Reusable trays would be great. Currently, however, there are only 30 public schools in the city that still have dishwashers and some schools do not even have the plumbing to support a dishwasher.

Twelve schools are presently self-funding the extra cost to purchase biodegradable sugar-cane trays. I strongly encourage schools that can raise the money to make the change to sugar-cane trays in order to keep their children from eating off of Styrofoam.  Presently, however, there is no free composting facility or pick-up available (something we should all be advocating for), so these trays go directly into sealed landfills where they do not biodegrade for a very long time.

The steps a parent can take to get rid of Styrofoam in their school can be found on our website page, TAKE ACTION.

Is there anything else you’d like people to know?

SOS is planning on setting up pilots for a variety of alternative possibilities, including composting for all the schools that use the sugar-cane trays, providing energy-efficient or solar-powered dishwashers for reusable trays, employing personal reusable trays and cutlery, and piloting new disposable prototypes as well as system changes that suit the needs of NYC and other large urban school districts.  We need volunteers, partnerships with universities and manufacturers, and funding to get these initiatives going asap!  For anyone interested in joining us, we can be contacted at info@sosnyc.org

As parents and educators, we have the responsibility to teach our children to be responsible citizens (which includes reducing waste) and to provide them with school facilities and services that they will not be paying for as adults!  NYC has an enormous amount of work to do in terms of reducing our waste.  We should teach and empower our children by setting the best example in our schools.

Styrofoam Trays

The Child Nutrition Act, which is renewed every five years and sets the rules and funding levels for federal nutrition programs, including the school lunch and breakfast programs, is presently being considered by Congress.  President Obama, who has set the goal of ending child hunger by 2015, is calling for $1 billion a year in funding for The Child Nutrition Act over the next ten years.  But Joel Burger, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, along with other agencies fighting child hunger, says it’s going to take $4 billion a year to get healthy, nutritious meals to the 13 million children in the United States living in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger (which represents more than one in ten households).  Unfortunately, the bill that emerged from the Senate Agricultural Committee has only allocated $450 million a year, not even half of what President Obama is recommending.

As the House of Representatives drafts its bill, which is expected to be released in mid-May, we are urging all New Yorkers to sign the New York City Council’s online petition urging Congress to support President Obama’s call for $1 billion a year in funding.  Although it’s not the $4 billion a year NYC Green Schools supports, $1 billion a year will help cover a much-needed increase in reimbursements for healthier meals, as well as make enrollment in meal programs easier for children and families.  It will also include assistance for farm-to-school programs.  One in four children in New York City live in poverty, defined as an annual income below $16,600 for a family of three.  We all need to rally behind this initiative of Speaker Christine Quinn and the City Council to make sure these children have access to healthy school meals, because in many cases the school breakfast and lunch that they eat are their only meals for the day.

So where is the money to fund the Child Nutrition Act supposed to come from?  In our opinion, if the federal government can come up with $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, it can certainly find $4 billion a year to serve our nation’s hungry, undernourished children the healthy meals they need to realize their full potential.  In its 2011 budget proposal, the Obama administration wants to limit farm subsidies to “wealthy farmers” and cut back government support for crop-insurance companies, which together would save more than $10 billion over the next ten years – enough to support the $1 billion a year the President is calling for.  Congress needs to make feeding healthy, nutritious meals to our country’s hungry children a top priority.  And we need to let Congress know by signing the City Council’s petition that it’s our top priority and what we want out tax dollars to support.

Since our bake-in rally outside City Hall in March, NYC Green Schools has been working with Community Boards to pass a resolution urging the Department of Education to repeal the ban on the sale of home-cooked foods in our schools.  We are happy to let you know that CBs 1, 2, 3, & 7 in Manhattan have all passed resolutions urging the DOE to repeal the ban.  Together, they will ask that the resolution be put on the agenda of their next Borough Board Meeting.  A Borough Board Meeting would offer NYC Green Schools the opportunity to present the issue to all the Manhattan CBs as well as to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. If all the CBs in Manhattan were to pass the resolution, this would be a powerful message to Chancellor Klein to repeal the ban.

But this initiative isn’t limited to Manhattan.  Last Wednesday, NYC Green School member Helen Greenberg visited the Youth/Educational Committee of CB6 in Brooklyn, which also passed the resolution to repeal the ban.  The full board of CB6 will be voting on the resolution Wednesday, May 12th.  We’re hoping other CBs in Brooklyn will follow the lead of CB6 and that the resolution can eventually be brought to their Borough Board Meeting as well.

If you know someone serving on a Community Board who would be supportive of this effort, please contact us above.  We want to make CBs all over the city part of this campaign.

Thanks.