From Houston Public Media:
When Houston ISD fourth grader Dora Cabarcas read an article about how a 12-year-old in Colorado inspired a ban on plastic foam takeout containers in her state, Cabarcas decided she wanted to do the same for her school.
Cabarcas always sits with her best friends, Celine David and Maddie Woods, during lunch. Their cafeteria at River Oaks Elementary has bright green walls and on the menu one day in March was a choice between dumplings, spaghetti and a chicken tamale. Dumplings seemed to be the most popular option among the kids.
Lunch one March day at River Oaks Elementary was a choice between a tamale, spaghetti, and dumplings.
Colleen DeGuzman / Houston Public Media
But lately, the girls haven’t been focused on what was on their lunch trays. Instead, their attention is on the trays themselves — which are made of Styrofoam.
“When the material is heated, the material releases harmful chemicals in the air,” Cabarcas said. “The chemicals can also enter your body by eating hot food that was on the tray.”
Polystyrene, a component of plastic foam, in high levels can cause cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and heat causes the plastic to latch onto food.
“They put the pizza that they make on the polystyrene, which is still hot,” Cabarcas said.
So, the girls took action.
The trio has spent the last few weeks giving presentations to several classes at their Houston school about the harmful chemicals in plastic foam.
They started a petition to get all Houston ISD trays switched out for reusable ones. Some states already require schools to use reusable lunch trays. Rhode Island adopted a plastic-foam ban earlier this year, pushing schools to switch to steel trays.
The girls quickly garnered support among their fellow students in Houston. Sprawled on several desks were pages full of their classmates’ signatures, scribbled on with colored markers and highlighters.
Once they reached around 200 signatures, their teacher helped them start an online petition, which had garnered nearly 300 supporters as of early April.
Fourth graders Dora Cabarcas, Celine David and Maddie Woods started a petition at their school to change their lunch trays into reusable ones.
Colleen DeGuzman / Houston Public Media
The petition grabbed the attention of Superintendent Mike Miles, who met with the girls on April 2. They asked him to ban plastic foam at all Houston ISD campuses. Miles, according to the students’ parents, said the district is in the process of considering tray alternatives.
This, however, may be an uphill battle for the girls.
The Texas Legislature is taking up several education-related issues this session. Lawmakers are debating school funding, teacher raises and a program that would let parents use public funds for private schooling. The legislation on the latter issue recently took a step toward becoming a law.
But David said the petition taught her that even small steps are important.
“I learned that really, every single voice, every single signature, every single dot has a big impact on everything,” said David, who is 9 years old and wants to be a lawyer when she grows up.
Cabarcas said she’s passionate about this initiative because plastic foam isn’t recyclable or biodegradable and she worries about landfills polluting the ocean.
“I really care about the ocean and love marine biology,” said Cabarcas, who is 10 and wants to be a marine biologist. “I love turtles and so it really inspired me.”
Woods, 10, is also pushing for reusable trays to make her school more eco-friendly.
“It just goes into the landfills and over time, those landfills will expand,” warned Woods, who also wants to be a marine biologist. “So we might not have enough room to build houses or have farms someday.”
But the solution may not be as simple as it seems.
Food service attendant Roquellia Wilson works at their school and serves hundreds of meals a day to students. Wilson said she understands the girls’ concern for their health and the environment, but plastic foam is convenient for her and her team.
“The trays are easier for the kids to handle being Styrofoam, and then they can just trash it,” Wilson said. “You don’t have to worry about spreading germs if it’s not washed clean, so that’s the only good part about having Styrofoam: they can throw it away.”
Roquellia Wilson is a food service attendant at River Oaks Elementary.
Colleen DeGuzman / Houston Public Media
David, however, emphasized that the polystyrene in their trays in high amounts is linked to memory, hearing and vision loss, according to the CDC.
“It can give you balance problems and tiredness,” David said. “And so, the teachers don’t want you laying on the desk and so you might get in trouble for that.”
Woods also said the issue is more pressing than people may realize because some students aren’t only eating off the trays — they’re eating the trays.
“In two classes in fourth grade, 10 people eat the trays,” she said. “So that really, really harms your body and your nervous system.”
“They physically eat the tray,” Cabarcas clarified. “They take a bite out of the tray, they bite it and they swallow it.”
Although Houston ISD hasn’t committed yet to switching out its lunch trays, Woods said the endeavor was still worth it: they learned how to think big.
“We’ll probably have a lot more chances to do more petitions because there’s a lot of things in the world that need more fixing,” she said.
