Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the School Waste Reduction topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
St. Louis Park middle‑school Green Team urges district to cut single‑use plastic in cafeterias
Summary
Student leaders told the school board the district spends thousands on disposable utensils and lacks adequate sorting bins; they asked the board to support a Hennepin County waste‑reduction grant application and to expand composting and reusable silverware.
Miles Foudre and Sarah Jivangi, student leaders of the St. Louis Park Middle School Green Team, told the St. Louis Park School Board on Feb. 25 that the district’s cafeteria waste practices rely heavily on single‑use plastics and that school staff denied a recent grant request to address the problem.
The students said they applied in December 2024 for a Hennepin County Waste Reduction Grant to replace disposable plasticware with reusable silverware and to add waste‑sorting stations. “We want the plastic utensils out of our lunchroom and in replacement silverware,” the students said in their presentation to the board. They said the district’s nutrition services told them the kitchen did not have capacity to wash silverware, though the students said the lunchroom already uses silverware for some meals.
The Green Team reported district‑level cost figures gathered with help from district staff. They said the district spent $133,809.60 on waste management in the 2023–24 school year and $1,717.50 on plastic utensils (96 cases of forks and 133 cases of spoons). A University of Minnesota program conducted a student‑led waste audit that found more than 90% of the cafeteria’s trash could have been composted or recycled, the students said.
The presenters also requested more and clearer compost/recycling bins. They told the board that lack of accessible sorting bins discourages correct disposal: “We only have one [sorting bin], which is not always in use,” the students said. They said better sorting infrastructure and a switch to reusable utensils would reduce costs because compost and recycling have lower tax rates than trash disposal in the city’s system.
The students said they had been informed by Addison Tamsen, the city’s waste specialist, that district schools are not currently compliant with a local “zero‑waste” packaging ordinance and could face fines if practices are not improved.
Board members thanked the students for the presentation and said staff would follow up through the students’ advisor, Megan Sutton. The board did not take any formal action during the meeting; board members encouraged staff and the students to continue conversations and suggested district offices could coordinate next steps.
The Green Team offered to meet with board members and invited them to attend a weekly after‑school meeting; they also distributed a slide deck and waste‑audit data to the board.
Ending: The board accepted the students’ materials and said district staff would follow up through the advisor. No funding or policy decisions were made at the Feb. 25 meeting.
