When Isabel Théorêt of Le Blog de NotreVie was preparing a sandwich for her 6-year-old son Felix's kindergarten class, the kid was mortified because ... she was using a Ziploc bag.
“He said, ‘No mommy, you can’t do that. Not a Ziploc,’ ” Mr. Lanciault said.
Through tears, the boy told his parents that the school had held a draw to win a stuffed teddy bear and only children who didn’t have any plastic sandwich bags could enter. The family normally uses Tupperware, but it was all in the dishwasher, and so they had packed their son’s ham sandwich in a plastic bag.
When Mr. Lanciault questioned his son’s teacher, she confirmed the school had staged the draw at a lunchtime daycare and that any student with a plastic sandwich bag was excluded. “You know Mr. Lanciault, it’s not very good for the environment,” the teacher told him. “We have to take care of the our planet and the bags do not decompose well.”
So - do you think the school is well-justified in excluding planet-destroyers Ziploc or is it yet another dogmatic indoctrination of environmental activism? http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Sandwich+gets+excluded+from+class+contest/4199546/story.html
However, it is a very good idea and would be a great way to instill a sense of eco-responsibility at a young age... as long as the parents knew it was happening.
I remember winning a t-shirt with an airbrushed cougar (the school's mascot) for not using aerosols in the house.
Iv'e had clutter issues, and see the teddy bear as jus as worse thing as the plastic bag.
I'd send my kid to school with a bag full of teddy bears and ziplock bags for everyone
At 6 I would've most likely cried in a similar manner. Six year olds cry for a lot of reasons. Guaranteed though that I would remember that plastic doesn't decompose and is bad for the environment.
And obviously I meant for the kid's mom to wash the tupperware. If she's the type to use them instead of ziplocs anyway, wouldn't she take a moment to wash one piece by hand? It's not hard. Shit, my family doesn't even have a dishwasher. We do ALL our dishes by hand. Le gasp!
There are far more effective ways to save the environment than cutting ziplock bags out of your day. Simply by riding a bike 1 day, 3 miles, to and from work you reduce your environmental impact more than a decades worth of save ziplock bags.
Cutting ziplock bags out is the equivalent of driving your Hummer H2 to buy some CFL bulbs and thinking you helped the environment.
Ziplocs probably harm the environment less than tupperware. I doubt you can get more than a couple dozen uses out of tupperware used by kids before it is broken or lost. Plus no wasting of water or using detergents with ziplocs. More environmental to just use the little plastic bags.
the Plastites will protest!
The only problem I have with what the teacher did is that they did not speak with the parents first. As noted, six-year-olds do not pack their own lunches, so excluding kids who had plastic in their lunches was wrong - it was not something the kids had control over. By not talking to the parents first, but making the conditions something that relied on the parents, the teacher was being very passive-aggressive,
Rather, the teacher should have talked to the parents and said that, due to environmental issues, they would appreciate if the parents did not use one-use plastic items when packing their kids' lunches.
But what if the parents refused, for whatever reason? Is it then okay to exclude the child from the drawing because of the parents' choice? Absolutely not! If that were so, it would also be fine to pick on the kid with two moms or two dads - penalizing them for a perceived deficiency in their parents.
Tl/dr - The school shouldn't have done it and, if they tried, they shouldn't have done it that way.
Plastic kills.
Funny. I expected a story involving political ostracism of gradeschool children to originate in the People's Republic of California.
-But it's actually in Commie Canada.
Well, not far off I guess.
At least the Mom has her head screwed on straight and called them on their crap and for using her developing children as tools.
I had a few teachers like this growing up and it's amazing when you think about it: there's a contract between teachers and parents to educate in both places, but if the teachers try to overstep their bounds, there's nothing stopping the parents from doing the same.
I suppose with our business leaders acting like Mr. Burns, it was only a matter of time before teachers starting acting like characters from King of the Hill.
Also, a tupperware container is also plastic -- much more of it -- and will also ultimately end up in a landfill. So the manufacturing and disposal cost may well equal out. But more importantly, the plastic container has to be washed every day, meaning increasing water use and power consumption.
It would not surprise me one bit if the tupperware container ends up being more environmentally costly if you consider all the factors. And even if it isn't, it's certainly not OBVIOUS what the right answer is.
So yeah, it boils down to politics, and punishing a child over their parents politics that they have no control over. Pretty unpleasant.
yeah, the biggest problem with the green movement is that people think that the actions of consumers is the major issue
the amount of pollution produced by individual people is so insignificant compared to the environmental nightmare placated by industry
i mean shoot use paper bags if you want but saving one baby bunny is hardly a triumph when the factory down the road kills a million a day
sonic the hedgehog
don't forget to vote
*"you can _______" instead of "you MUST _______"
Excuse me. I need to go have my bowl of yogurt-covered lilypad flakes with organic sheep milk now.
Sincerely,
Golden Rainbow Soaring Unicorn Dove Woman