We received this request for help. Please let Lauren know if you are interested in helping. Thanks, Lauren for reaching out and helping our community move to zero-waste!
Lauren Agrella-Sevilla <[email protected]>
Hi John and Kim,
Thank you so much for leading the way for Moving to Conservers! There is so much good going on! I’m really excited about it. We have two small children and evening gatherings are hard for us to make, so we have yet to make a potluck, but I am following with interest all of the work you’re doing. Thank you!
As a former high school teacher and administrator, I am very interested in the ways we can work with our schools to reduce waste. I met several weeks ago with the head of food and nutrition at the Transylvania County Schools to begin to understand why so many single-use cafeteria trays are being used at all of our county schools (I noticed this visiting our first-grader at Brevard Elementary School). She is pretty overwhelmed with the food shortage that exists for many families in our county and has her work cut out for her in providing free and reduced lunch for the majority of our students. Still, she was willing to listen to me ask her questions so that I might better understand what we can do to work together to reduce waste and begin to educate students.
Kenn and Jan (included here, so we’re all on the same page) and I met last week to begin to brainstorm where to begin to help reduce the schools-to-landfill waste stream, and we landed on an idea to run a week-long experiment at Brevard Elementary School. I have yet to pitch this to the principal and to get her input on what might work. We are still giving the idea form, and I am more than happy to take our idea to her and see what might work best for the school, cafeteria workers, teachers, and students.
I am so jazzed that you’ll be at Davidson River School this week! I’ll be interested to know what you learn and discuss. I’m wondering who on the Moving to Conservers team might be interested in joining with Kenn, Jan, and myself to work on a “pilot” or experimental project in just one elementary school to begin with. Since you all are sinking so much energy into this effort, I don’t want to duplicate how we’re going about this.
I do not have a lot of time or money or, at this stage of life, a lot of extra creative energy, but I do have a burning desire to help bring about change, and I see a huge opportunity in the schools. If you can put me in touch with anyone who might be interested in joining a brainstorming team in this vein, I would be very grateful. And we can make an evolving plan from there!
Thanks again. Hope you both have a great week,
Lauren
