Cafeteria Culture (CafCu) is working creatively to achieve zero waste school cafeterias and climate smart communities through education, arts, media, and action. Founded in 2009 as Styrofoam out of Schools, we catalyzed the complete elimination of polystyrene (aka styrofoam) trays from all NYC schools and the 5 other largest US urban school districts. As of this school year, our efforts will result in the elimination of half a BILLION styrofoam trays per year from landfills, incinerators, and student meals across the US. We are dedicated to ensuring that these new compostable plates remain as resources. We achieved this goal by working in partnership with NYC Department of Education (DOE) School Food Directors, parents, teachers, elected officials and students, who played a key role in winning this victory! Central to our work is the piloting of innovative, hands-on environmental education with student leadership and climate action in schools and neighboring communities. To date, we have primarily led our school programs in low-income communities of color in Manhattan and Brooklyn. We seek partner schools with a variety of challenges in order to develop cafeteria and classroom curricula and operational methods that schools citywide can benefit from. The culmination of this work is our SORT2save KIT - Phase 1 – CAFETERIA RANGERS, a free online resource for NYC =schools to achieve zero waste cafeterias. (watch our SORT2save video overview: https://youtu.be/ld3ejQy_90M) Students who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are empowered through our programming to debate, ask questions, tell their own stories about food waste, garbage and environmental justice, and to participate in the design of effective solutions to these real-world problems. Students actively engage in Civic Participation and Environmental Activism, both locally and citywide (watch: “5th Grade Change-Makers Take Action on Bag Bill” https://youtu.be/wnL_X8NwgyQ and our YouTube channel, CafCu Media) AWARD HIGHLIGHTS We are honored to be one of five recipients within North America to receive the inaugural 2015 UL Innovative Education Award (ULIEA) for Environmental-STEM education for our ARTS+ACTION school program (awarded via North American Association of Envrionmental Education). We are also a recipient of a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2 Environmental Quality Award (2013) for catalyzing TRAYLESS TUESDAYS citywide, which has eliminated over 100 million styrofoam trays from NYC’s waste stream with no additional cost to the city.
