The Amount of Waste Produced at Lunches is Trash

November 6, 2018

By Claire Pak

The average human produces about 4.4 pounds of trash each day. With a total enrollment of around 2200 students, the total trash production of Lexington High School rapidly accumulates. During daily lunches, numerous untouched fruits wrapped in plastic bags are simply tossed away along with meal trays that still hold heaps of food. Members of the LHS community need to cut down on trash production at lunches in order to reduce the school’s negative impact on the environment.

A study shows that 80 million metric tons of carbon are produced by Massachusetts in just one year. This is equivalent to the weight of 266 full grown blue whales, one of the numerous species hurt by climate change. Trash production is partly to blame: landfills are a primary culprit of methane emission, while they also worsen habitat loss.

Last year at Jonas Clarke Middle School, a campaign known as Slash the Trash was initiated to decrease the total number of trash bags produced each lunch. Through composting and recycling, Clarke was able to lower the school’s trash bag count by 50% within a month, decreasing from 14 bags to seven per day. At LHS, there is barely a composting system in place.

But we don’t need sweeping campaigns or large structural changes to start decreasing our trash production. Encourage your friends to only take what they actually want to eat. It is better to go back and buy more food than to buy a surplus and throw away the leftovers. Consider choosing something biodegradable, like an unwrapped banana, rather than a plastic bag-wrapped apple.

We are on the right track. There is an National Honor Society initiative in the works that would make lunchtime composting an option. But it ultimately comes down to all of our abilities, as individuals, to hold ourselves accountable. So the next time you find yourself hovering over a trash can with something you know is recyclable, what will you do? Will you throw it away, and endure a half second of guilt before you erase it and move on? Or will you find a recycling bin, and feel just a little bit better?