When CB West senior Shaylan Kolodney, 17, got into high school she noticed the cafeteria was filled with Styrofoam plates. They were under hundreds of pieces of pizza and chicken patties, and she wanted to change that.
Kolodney was inspired to take action because she had gotten really into reading science statistics. “It really struck me in the heart,” she said.
Kolodney went through the school board and started doing presentations. She also talked to Aramark, the school’s foodservice provider. Now the cafeteria uses biodegradable utensils and containers lunch ladies can stick in dish washers. Seventeen thousand less clamshell containers enter landfills each year and Kolodney hopes to make this number higher. She is now working with Doylestown to give local restaurants incentive to use alternatives.
Styrofoam is a brand name for polystyrene. It a petroleum-based product and therefore contributes to green house gas, which depletes the ozone layer and adds to climate change. Polystyrene can’t be recycled cheaply because of the components it’s made out of. Most recycling facilities don’t handle it because it costs too much money and effort.
Polystyrene is usually a single use container that is thrown right into a landfill or the ocean. It is dangerous for wildlife; 50 percent of sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs. Any polystyrene container ever used still exists. It takes almost an eternity for it to decompose.
Kolodney said ignoring environmental problems is like “If you live in your own house, knock down walls, pick up the carpet, spit on the floor and say it’s not important.”
“If the environment isn’t healthy the human race isn’t healthy. Our job is to see ourselves as part of the earth, not separate,” she said.
Alternatives for polystyrene are recyclable plastic, cardboard, compostable boxes, and reusable containers. The problem is that they are more expensive. Styrofoam is the cheapest container at 7 cents per container while compostable containers cost 17 cents.
Kolodney spoke to various restaurants before her presentation. She found that most restaurants in town are already making the change on their own. 86 West and T-Swirl-Crepe Restaurant both said they steer away from polystyrene because they are environmentally conscious. Planet Smoothie, however, said they still use polystyrene because it has better insulation.
Right now there are still at least a dozen restaurants in the borough, and several dozen more in the township, that still use polystyrene because it costs less. But the restaurants Kolodney spoke to in town were interested in becoming environmentally friendly.
Kolodney pitched various solutions to the Doylestown Environmental Board. These include giving stickers to restaurants that are eco friendly, promoting eco friendly restaurants on the town borough website, and communicating with the Intelligencer about publishing the names of eco friendly restaurants. The town is considering piggybacking on programs that are already out there, like in New York City.
Cafeteria Culture, an anti-waste non-profit based in New York City, influenced Kolodney in her research. They pushed to get rid of polystyrene in the New York City public schools, the largest public school system in the U.S. with 18 thousand schools.
Eventually New York City made the Urban School Food Alliance. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Orange County, and Miami-Dade County school districts began to collectively purchase polystyrene alternatives. The goal was to increase the number of purchases and bring prices down. This succeeded, their compostable plate manufacturer even started to offer other school districts lower prices too.
“We thought if we can change New York City schools it’s big enough to make changes city wide and nationally,” said Cafeteria Culture Executive Founder Debby Lee Cohan. Now small towns like Doylestown are looking towards New York as an example.
Kolodney hopes she can make use small changes to make big ones as well. “I am completely concerned about the future and future generations,” she said.