Jamie Oliver's Speech at the TED Awards

I'm sure that you've see or heard about Jamie's mission to get children to not only eat better but know more about their food and where it comes from.

I really liked Jamie's idea of having food ambassadors in grocery stores to show people what they can make from local ingredients in their store. I'm sure that we've all been to the grocery store or farmers market and seen something and had no idea what it is let alone what it tastes like. It was a little scary see all those kids trying to identify the foods that he brought in.

The video is about 20 minutes long. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Bottled Water Free Week Warp-up

March 11th was Bottled Water Free Day. I challenged all the students at our school to not bring bottled water for the whole week. We also added the challenge of using a reusable container for all their drinks. I went around at lunch time giving out prizes to students that were able to meet this challenge.
I have to say that the students at our school did really well with this challenge. I nearly went broke giving out prizes! The primary students (and their parents) are doing an amazing job not only with re-usable drinking containers, but also with waste-free lunches. Now it's just getting them to bring anything that is waste home so it can be disposed of properly. The junior students on the other hand are another story. Though many of the students are good about re-usable water bottles their lunches are another story. This got me to thinking that each week students should be given a challenge to make their lunches more environmentally friendly. I'm also looking into what we can do for next year to make sure students are doing their best to bring waste-free lunches everyday. Maybe on curriculum night we can set up a waste-free lunch display and sell some inexpensive, re-usable containers.

Hope everyone has a great March break!

The Numbers

Prices from www.grocerygateway.com

A 12 pack of 330ml water bottles is $3.99. A reusable container can cost anywhere between $1.00-$15.00 depending one the type you buy. Considering that you pay for the water that comes out of your tap the reusable bottle pays for itself after 1-4 cases of water. After that it's nothing but savings!

A 8 x 200ml tetra pack (juice box) of Allen's apple juice costs $2.99 ($0.19/100ml).
The Del Monte "Grab N Go pouch" costs $3.49 for 10 x 200ml ($0.17/100ml).
The 1.2L can of Allen's apple juice costs $1.29 ($0.11/100ml).

Not a huge savings between these options, but the savings will add up over time. You should also consider the waste from each of these options. The 1.2L can is 100% recyclable, where as the only the paper part of the juice box is recyclable (the straw and inner lining go to waste). The Grab N Go pouch is 100% waste, not a single part of it can be put in your recycling bin.

Kool-Aid Jammers

I was sent this link the other day about a fundraising program for schools. In a nut shell, the school collects Kool-Aid Jammers and Del Monte terra packs to receive 2cents for each one collected. That equals 20 dollars for every thousand collected. TerraCycle then uses the drink pouches to make tote bags, pencil case, etc.

Maybe this is something that our school should do?
I thought about it and realized that this recycling program doesn't really deal with the root of the problem. Our students should be bringing drinks to school in reusable containers. Also, there is little to no nutritional value in any of these drinks. 1 pouch (200ml) contains 24 grams of sugar, that's a little less than 6 teaspoons of sugar mixed with a little water. That's 90 empty calories of sugar water, how do think that would affect your ability to learn? Once all of these drink pouches have been collect they have to be driven to a UPS pick-up location where, I can only assume, they take another drive to a factory... seems like a lot of energy to recycle something that isn't good for so many reasons.

It would be nice to be part of this fundraising campaign, but I don't want to encourage students to consume a product and think that they're doing something good. How about people don't buy them and then we don't have to worry about how to recycle them or worry about taking up space in land fills?