SAYBROOK TOWNSHIP — A group of environmentally conscious Ashtabula Area City schoolchildren are proposing one-use foam lunch trays be a thing of the past.
A switch from Styrofoam trays to biodegradable trays “is necessary for people and animals” to have a clean and healthy environment, said Camille Licate, founder and director of Kids For Positive Change (KFPC), which consists of students from the district’s intermediate schools.
The students presented school board members with alternatives to Styrofoam trays at Wednesday night’s board meeting at Lakeside High School.
“We have a slide show of alternatives to Styrofoam lunch trays,” Licate said. “We are working toward a zero-waste district.”
About 25 students presented the slide show, showing how the foam trays adversely affect the health of people and animals.
“We estimate 400,000 foam trays are used every school year,” said Ella Boardwine, a student and member of KFPC. “We want biodegradable trays.”
To make their point, the students set several boxes of foam trays in the front of the school board’s meeting table, representing just how many trays are used every day in the district.
