New Lunch Policy Takes a Bite Out of Landfills : Schools: To cut down on refuse, students at an Oak Park campus must bring lunches in reusable containers.

Watching the children at Oak Hills Elementary School in Oak Park nibble on their lunches, Principal Anthony Knight sees a green future.

Among the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, there is not a paper napkin or candy wrapper in sight.

And if a pint-sized potato chip bag lurks in a lunch box somewhere, Knight is confident it won’t land in his garbage cans--thanks to the school’s new zero-trash policy.

“We are trying to cut down on waste going into landfills,” Knight said. “It is our planet and we cannot keep trashing it.”

Under Oak Hills’ new policy, children must bring school lunches in reusable containers. If plastic bags are used, they must be taken home and used again. Commercially prepackaged food is prohibited.

“We are trying to get away from all these individually wrapped items,” Knight explained. “Instead of a bag of chips, they have to have a container of chips.”

Enforcement of the policy is simple: “If they bring trash, they take it home with them,” Knight said.

School officials say the program, which started this school year, is already reducing campus trash.

But some parents complain that the policy goes too far.

“I think in some respects it is great,” parent Amy Menashe said. “But I feel it really puts a big burden on the kids and the adults.”

To meet the policy’s strict guidelines, Menashe had to buy new lunch containers for her two daughters and must spend more time in the morning fixing their lunches, she said.

Last school year, in her own attempt to use plastic containers, Menashe said her children lost more than $100 worth of Tupperware.

“If we send Tupperware to school, nobody is there to monitor that it will ever make it home,” she said. “I understand why they did it, but there has to be a happy medium.”

Parent Susan Kaye agreed.

“It is a bit restrictive,” she said. “But I think the policy is trying to teach us to change to be more ecologically minded for the future.”

Despite some complaints, the program appears to be working.

Last year, lunchtime trash filled eight 55-gallon trash barrels each day, Knight said. But so far this year, lunch trash has filled only about a half-barrel a day.

“There have been extremely positive results,” Knight said. “That is 1,260 barrels of trash (a year) that is not going into a landfill.”

Many of the 510 students who attend Oak Hills have embraced the new policy.

“We want to keep our environment clean,” 5 1/2-year-old Garrett Spiegel said, taking a bologna sandwich out of a plastic container in his Batman lunch box.

Five-year-old Sarah Weinstein’s lunch box is an environmentalist’s dream come true. Inside the first-grader’s purple-and-green Little Mermaid pouch are three neatly arranged plastic containers--and not a hint of paper.

“I have a Tupperware drink, I have a banana, but I didn’t eat it because I don’t like bananas,” Sarah said. “I have this big Tupperware that I keep my sandwich and some chips in. And, I have a cloth napkin.”

One of the hurdles the school faces in implementing its program is steering parents away from the allure of kid-sized commercial packaging.

Five-year-old Nicole Rader’s single-portion bag of Doritos and paper juice boxes make Knight cringe.

“They are in violation of the policy,” he said. “That’s three counts right there.” For children whose lunch boxes violate the rules, officials send home a “green note” asking for parental compliance.

Encouraging parents to resist the attraction of petite packaged items is an objective of school and government officials trying to reduce waste.

“The big distributing companies want (consumers) to believe this is what kids want,” said Virginia Hand, the county’s recycling manager. “But you have to start with the consumer. Somewhere along that loop we have to apply some pressure.”

Hand said Oak Hills’ policy goes beyond waste reduction projects launched by other Ventura County schools.

“It is right in line with what we have tried to do on a county if not a statewide basis,” she said. “I have not heard of any school (in the county) trying to do a zero-garbage policy. It is a pretty bold project, but it is feasible.”