Bit annoyed with school's lack of green thinking. AIBU?

[Butchmanda]

DS is in Year 6, brother left 2 years ago, so been associated with this school for quite some time. They have some really nice school trips. However, it's ALWAYS their policy to insist the kids bring food in disposable containers in plastic carrier bags. When lunch is done, everything is thrown away. (I've been on trips as a helper, and teachers provide a couple of bin liners and scoop up everything). Even food/drink not finished is chucked away, so no chance to save - for example - a piece of fruit or half bottle of water for the journey home.

I've always felt a very uneasy about this. I go to great lengths to reduce / reuse / recycle at home and so it makes me cringe to think of all this stuff going straight to landfill. (Maybe, depending on trip destination, there is chance to recycle the plastic bottles, but I somehow doubt it). If every child goes on a trip each half term, that's 6 trips a year x 7 years = 42 carrier bags etc to landfill in the course of primary school, per child. The school has 420 children. That's the school choosing to chuck 2,520 carrier bags a year.

Personally I think it's very crap! Especially when there is SO much in the news these days about the horrific effects plastic have on the environment and, particularly, on sealife.

Earlier this week my son had a trip. He decided he'd take a little backpack instead of a plastic bag, so that he wouldn't have to chuck stuff away. He's perfectly capable of being responsible for his belongings so I agreed. Apparently he was torn off a strip by his teacher for 'not doing as you were told' and made to put his lunch in a carrier bag which she provided (which he then had to bring home anyway, as his sandwich was in a Tupperware container).

I try to pick my battles and he's out of there soon, but I'm just annoyed - not for my son - but for their disregard for environmental issues. I really think it's about time they updated some of their habits.

I get that it might be a lot easier to just chuck stuff away instead of carrying it around all day, and there's less to leave behind on the train etc, but they always go on about being grown up and responsible, so these older kids can surely carry a small back pack. Before long they'll all be on buses and trains every morning commuting to secondary school.

Do other schools do this?

yes, and not really thought about it, though ds takes food in an old margerine tub.

They shouldn't be eating on the journey.
The teachers have enough to do on a school trip without policing who has left what Tupperware item or drinks bottle behind.

You can’t think of any reasons why this system might prove successful for the school?
I’m impressed they get a trip every half term, mine get one a year!

It’s unrealistic to expect teachers to police bags. You might not go mad at the school if you child left it on a bus or in the park but I can promise you hundreds of parents would.

I imagine after a long school trip with lots of children, the last thing they want to do is check everybody has their lunch boxes. Much more environmentally unfriendly to lose 17 Unicorn lunch boxes, twelve Chill water bottles, two rucksacks and a cool box the size of a hamper.

Get biodegradable lunch boxes: www.natureandmy.com/products/plastic-free-lunch-box-kids

I think you are BU. Yes your child maybe capable, but you never know. And if they allow one , they have to allow others too. It's not everyday, and they have a reason to ask to stick to the rules.
Our school sometimes let children carry backpacks when they have place to store them while doing activity. Other times, ask us to provide everything in carrier bags.

You can always use brown paper bags from home bargains.

Just send it in a recycled paper bag. With sandwiches etc wrapped in recycled kitchen towel.

I agree with you OP, we are giving out such confusing messages to our children. On the one hand we are teaching them to reuse, recycle or reduce the use of non recyclable products, next we are saying, yes it's fine to just through it all in a black bin liner and forget about it.

I feel uneasy about the huge amount of paper resources that get laminated in schools unnecessarily only to be thrown away at the end of term, also the lack of paper recycling bins in classrooms, they seem to have vanished in the last five years.

We recycle in school but not on trips. It is a logistical nightmare on a trip. Someone will not put the lid on their drink properly and it will spill/leave a trail following them. Someone will leave a yoghurt and then accidentally break the pot. Cue mess everywhere. Somebody will have egg sandwiches and leave one which will cause the coach to reek of egg all the way home. Somebody else’s will complain about the smell of egg all the way home. Someone will drop bread crusts out of their bag onto the floor. Someone will decide to eat their bag of crisps they saved and have it burst open and make a mess in the coach.

Most children will, of course, manage very well and follow all the rules. The ones that don’t could get the school banned from a location or barred from using the coach company. Trips are hard work for the staff and volunteers involved.

Perhaps the school have important issues to deal with. Jeez who the hell would want to be a teacher these days.

Send his lunch packed in paper then? It's not rocket science.

We have enough to deal with without having to police lunch boxes on school trips.

I’ve been on more trips than I care to count. Disposable lunchtime stuff saves the staff and children a massive amount of aggro. If you don’t like plastic, use paper. Just don’t assume you know best and cause hassle for staff and your child because you’re a martyr to your blue bin.

It's this very attitude that means the planet is in the state that it's in. Is it really so much aggro to have a backpack with a lunch box? We used to manage perfectly fine with them when I was at school.

We have become such a throwaway society. I despair.

So don't send your child on school trips? They won't need to use a stinky polluting coach either!

Most kids hate carrying stuff and half-eaten food is potential mess in the coach or whatever.

Send him with a paper bag if plastic bags worry you. At the schools my kids go to they have had on average 2 trips a year so that might make you feel better about the amount of landfill.

YANBU

I’ve never heard of this, all school trips have had regular lunchbox & rubbish/leftover food brought home in them.

Just because something is easy it doesn’t make it right.

OP I think it takes a lot of work to be a green school. Look up okehampton college in Devon. They've done great work but it's not easy.

Olivia It isn't a lunch box and backpack. It's 420 lunch boxes, 420 backpacks, 420 water bottles. Countless spoons and yogurt pots and apple cores and banana skins.

Paper biodegrades. Food composts. Tetrapacks can be recycled, and most places I’ve visited have a recycle bin.

There’s no need to make a trip more difficult than it already is.

Yes and that's all going into landfill.

They are Year 6. It's not that bloody hard.

The planet is fucked but who cares eh? As long as we don't have to cart around stuff.

FFS.

This drives me mad too, partly because of the environmental issues and the mixed messages it sends also because my son would rather have a backpack and his hands free than carry a bag all day. Besides during last week's trip they had lunch binned the bags, and then went to the gift shop to buy tat in a carrier bag to carry about all afternoon. We always had bags on school trips why are children suddenly considered incapable managing a bag?

"They shouldn't be eating on the journey.
The teachers have enough to do on a school trip without policing who has left what Tupperware item or drinks bottle behind."
Wtf, so go all day starving? Stop talking out of your arse🙄