Wake County Schools Ditch Lunch Trays

By Tristan Dufresne 1/19/19 11:42AM

RALEIGH — Wake County's 187 public schools are abandoning the use of disposable polystyrene lunch trays in favor of 100-percent recycled molded fiber, a biodegradable material typically made from paperboard and newsprint pulp, in an effort to address environmental and health concerns associated with petroleum-based products.

Polystyrene, better known to many by the popular trade name Styrofoam, is a thermoplastic polymer developed in the 1830s by manipulating resin extracted from the American sweetgum tree. A highly inert compound, it is resistant to both bio- and photodegradation, taking hundreds of years to break down naturally.

The decision was made by the Wake County Public School System's Child Nutrition Department. Communication director Lisa Luten told the Sundial, "The fiber trays are more expensive than the previous trays. The cost of the old trays were 3.49 cents [per tray], cost of the new trays are 6.13 cents.

"The Child Nutrition Department is required by law to be self-sustaining so in order for them to afford the more expensive trays they renegotiated on a recycling contract for kitchen plastics and metals…and that helped free up resources to help offset the added cost," Luten said.

Sue Scoop, spokesperson for the pro-compostable-trays advocacy group Every Tray Counts, said "most adults remember reusable trays" from their childhood, made from metal or hard plastic and washed after every meal, "and they think that is still what is happening.

"But most schools, it turns out, don't have the infrastructure to do that anymore... They either don't have the proper plumbing or capital investment for the dishwasher or they won't pay for the labor," Scoop said. "So they move to cheap disposable trays, which are dangerous for the environment and for children."

The Every Tray Counts website cites concerns over cancer-risk ingredients of styrene and benzene leaking out into food on lunch trays, especially when the food is fatty and/or hot, or the tray is scraped.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies polysterene, as "not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans," and styrene as "probably carcinogenic to humans," a recent upgrade in severity.



Though there are reported neurotoxic effects, such as headaches and drowsiness, from high exposures to polystyrene's ingredient of styrene, food wrapping and food contact items don't deliver a high enough exposure to cause concern, according to a comprehensive review of the relevant literature conducted by experts with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in 2002. It concluded there "does not appear to be a strong causal correlation between styrene and increased human cancer incidence."



Government-level efforts to reduce polystyrene use and production in the United States date back to 1987 when Berkeley, California, passed an initiative banning traditional Styrofoam as a component of food containers. Suffolk County, New York was the first jurisdiction to attempt a complete polystyrene ban in 1988, but this endeavor proved unsuccessful in the face of the plastics lobby and other industrial trade groups. By the mid-2000s, more than a hundred local districts had at least minimally restricted polystyrene.

The cost benefit of polystyrene products from a budget perspective is their extremely low manufacturing costs, but Scoop says this can be offset if school districts also implement Every Tray Counts' suggested composting plan."

Wake County has not announced if or when they would begin to compost, or if they would encourage schools to do so.

Scoop said, "It has to be stressed that the cost becomes neutral or beneficial if you institute the whole program... You're now shifting the extra cost of the trays by reducing trash dumpsters, trash pick-up and landfill costs.

"I think that's really important because, once people hear that [molded fiber] trays cost more, that becomes a huge hurdle."

For now, the county's students will be throwing out around 53,000 fewer polystyrene trays every day.