Fifth-grader has an idea to help the environment: Dispense with disposable trays

On nacho day, when Lombard fifth-grader Amber Harris finishes her chips, she tosses the Styrofoam tray that held her favorite school lunch into the trash. There, it joins about 100 others.

It's a sight the aspiring veterinarian doesn't like to see, and she's doing something about it.

With a well-researched presentation she's given to the principal of Butterfield Elementary as well as the superintendent and school board in Lombard Elementary District 44, Amber is pushing the district to adopt a more environmentally friendly way to serve lunches.

Instead of using disposable trays made of Styrofoam, which Amber learned is a brand name for a material called polystyrene, she wants her district to switch to plastic trays that can be used and washed, again and again.

"The bad thing about using polystyrene is it's made of nonrenewable resources," Amber said. "We're just throwing it out and it's ending up in our landfills."

The material, in fact, makes up roughly 25 percent of landfills, according to Amber's research. And that's when it doesn't end up floating in oceans, washed up along beaches or strewed about parks and forests.

At a beach she visits each summer with her family in Florida, Amber often cleans up Styrofoam and assorted trash. She completed a project about litter last year and was surprised to learn just how widespread the problem is.

"Sometimes it's hard to realize how much is getting thrown out," she said.

That's why, in her presentation to school leadership, Amber used the metaphor of a football field.

With the help of school secretaries who are privy to daily lunch orders, Amber found Butterfield Elementary's 300 students use roughly enough polystyrene trays each year to cover two football fields, and the school spends about $900 to buy them. District 44 as a whole, she found, uses and throws away 1,200 trays each day - enough to cover 26 football fields in a year - at a cost of $10,800.

"Butterfield is excellent at being kind," Amber said, referring to the school's theme of kindness. "But maybe we can be kind to the environment."

Amber's interest in the environment made her take notice last year when she visited the school where her father, now a fifth-grade math and science teacher at Butterfield, previously taught in Lindenhurst.

Students at B.J. Hooper Elementary receive their hot lunches on plastic trays, so Amber began to question why her peers couldn't do the same.

She started her research three months ago, watching YouTube videos about the environmental ills of Styrofoam and looking up the cost of various types of trays.

Now district administrators are starting research, too. Officials under Superintendent Ted Stec are taking Amber's pitch seriously and beginning to conduct a cost analysis.

Jenn Nimke, director of communications and strategic planning, said officials are evaluating whether each of the district's eight schools has the space to accommodate a commercial dishwasher and if the necessary electric and water capabilities are in place. They're doing so with pride at the initiative one of their students has shown to advocate for an important issue.

"This is what we want our youth to be thinking about," said Amber's father, Peter Harris, "to know that they have a voice and they can bring about change."

Butterfield Elementary Principal Kris Walsh said a switch to plastic trays could have practical benefits, too, helping young students better balance meals and milk cartons with fewer flimsy-tray messes like "blueberries all over the floor."

"I would love to see it work," Walsh said about Amber's idea.

As she prepares to head to Glenn Westlake Middle School next year, Amber hopes her proposal to switch tray types and decrease trash can become reality.

"I just feel good," she said, "that I can possibly change this."