Rhodes class project leads to cafeteria Sharing Table

By JEN COWART
Posted 7/10/19

By JEN COWART The students in Susan Weber's classes at E.S. Rhodes Elementary School are known for their passion for environmental causes each year. This year's class was a looped class that had been with her last year as well. Their focus was on

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Rhodes class project leads to cafeteria Sharing Table

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The students in Susan Weber’s classes at E.S. Rhodes Elementary School are known for their passion for environmental causes each year.

This year’s class was a looped class that had been with her last year as well. Their focus was on reducing the use of plastic in the school cafeteria, which led to a district-wide reduction at the elementary level.

“Looping with those students was the perfect opportunity to take last year’s work and expand on it,” Weber said. “We identified four big areas, continuing to reduce waste and the use of single-use plastic such as food wrapped in plastic and straws in our building, creating a sharing table, upcycling and reusing plastic to reduce waste, and creating a Zero Waste Day.”

With those goals, the students worked together to get tongs or spoons to serve food right onto the trays instead of having foods wrapped in plastic. They also created self-watering planters with some of their plastic waste. Seedlings placed in the planters have grown in a new school garden. The first Zero Waste Day was slated for the end of the school year.

“We have made announcements and put up a lot of signage around the school about stopping to think and make good choices before throwing something away,” she said.

However, it was the Sharing Table that was at the forefront of the students’ minds during a recent visit to the school.

“We had the support of Tricia Wright at Aramark,” Weber said. “We held an assembly on May 24, and the students ran the entire assembly. They taught the whole school about the four areas, and Aramark came in and set up the table and made the sign. All our kids had to do was ask. The table and stand were up the very next week after the assembly.”

A Sharing Table is a space in which students who have purchased an Aramark lunch can place their side items if they are unwanted and unopened, including milk. The cooler bag in the Rhodes cafeteria is filled with ice packs to keep the items chilled and the students can come up at any time to leave or take an item.

According to the students, their current projects were based on a forecast for the future.

“By 2050, which is roughly 31 years away, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish,” Abbey Nelson said. “That may seem like a long way away, but it really isn’t.”

Her fellow classmate agreed.

“Thousands of single-use plastic items are thrown into the ocean each day,” Brighid Weber said. “We are so against the use of single-use plastics.”

It was because of last year’s study of the use of plastics in the cafeteria that the projects were this year’s focus.

“We started paying attention last year and we noticed that there was a huge bin of perfectly good food, untouched, and we thought then that a Sharing Table could be a game-changer,” Weber said. “Now those items are being eaten by someone who likes them, and whatever is left is taken up to the school nurse and given to kids who need them.”

The Sharing Table will continue during the next school year, and it is the hope of Weber and her students that the project will expand to other schools across the district. 

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