LGUSD, refuse this single-use plastic like LGUSD students have been taught to do.
"Turn off the tap by shutting down the plastic machine", advises The Story of Stuff.
Plastic comes from fossil fuels.
For sustainability and climate resilience purposes, we've been teaching our kids that we've got to reduce our use of fossil fuels.
We've been teaching our kids we've got to stop using plastic in situations where we have reasonable alternatives.
And our kids care...
Daves and Lexington Elementary kids campaigned to get rid of plastic packaging and straws both in the district and with local officials.
The Fisher kids were grand prize winners of an Eco Grant from Grades of Green in part for persuading the school to stop selling single-use water bottles.
Van Meter kids attended an assembly with a representative of West Valley Collection & Recycling to learn more about how our waste stream is handled. And for Earth Day, the Van Meter Green Team reviewed with the students that "5 R's is the new 3 R's": Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rot. The first and best strategy for waste reduction is to REFUSE. "Avoid products designed for one use that can last for centuries in a landfill".
Students learned that REFUSING unnecessary plastic is better than recycling it.
(And recall from this post, that recycling those rolls of green plastic is not even a reasonable option anyway.)
Why is refusing plastic better than recycling it?
"The companies paying for the ads that frame recycling as an easy solution to a potentially devastating environmental problem know that recycling cannot keep up with the flood of new plastic" says Judith Enck, a former regional administrator at the EPA, now a visiting professor at Bennington College in Vermont and president of Beyond Plastics, a group focused on ending plastics pollution.
In fact, as NPR explains, plastic recycling is essentially a myth. Reuters illustrates recycling remains a myth even with technological advances.
As this video below explains, "We can't burn, bury, or recycle our way out" of the problems with plastic.
So why produce this unnecessary plastic product to begin with?
Did you know that artificial turf was actually created as an avenue for the overproduction of plastics? Did you know ARTIFICIAL TURF IS CLASSIFIED AS A SINGLE-USE PLASTIC? Source: the 9/15/21 CalRecycle.ca.gov Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets and Curbside Recycling.
Part of the mission statement of LGUSD is to develop, through role modeling, globally responsible citizens demonstrating stewardship. Given that we have reasonable alternatives to covering our outdoor surfaces with plastic, refusing plastic grass is another way to model for our kids and community this global responsibility and stewardship.
Below, LGUSD boasts about its environmental stewardship successes...
Choosing alternatives to plastic grass is another important way to role model sustainability.
So LGUSD, let's walk the talk and keep unnecessary plastic grass out of our schools.
Most people dont think about the weight and volume of refuse involved in disposal of used playing fields. We go to all kinds of effort to get people to stop using single-use plastic bottles and bags but we'd have to prevent millions of those to match the reduction of plastic we could achieve by keeping plastic grass off our district schoolgrounds.