Last year, Mia Wong and Ryan He were among the students at San Francisco's Jefferson Elementary School who raised their concerns about school lunch packaging.
"It's all coated in plastic," Wong said.
"What's going to happen about that? Yeah, so much plastic. That is ridiculous," He added.
They wanted to rid the lunches of single-use plastic, because of its links to pollution and climate emissions. Students at other SFUSD schools joined them in protest.
Turns out, their message landed. Revolution Foods—which provides meals to 95 schools in the district—has started testing compostable packaging.
"We just needed the little nudge. That's all it took," said Heather Clevenger. She is the senior marketing director for Revolution Foods. The company had tested compostable packaging a few years ago, she said. But the materials performed poorly and were expensive.
After reading letters from students at Frank McCoppin and Commodore Sloat elementary schools, asking the company to just try to use less plastic, she decided to take another look. The materials had improved, which led to the packaging pilot.
Right now, around half of the meals arrive in compostable containers. But starting in January, all of the meal containers will be compostable.
But Revolution Foods hasn’t been able to go completely plastic-free. Each lunch still arrives covered in plastic film, which Clevenger says is needed to keep the food safe and to prevent spills during transport.
But sitting outside after lunch on Monday, Mia Wong, who’s in fifth grade, said they’re happy that at least something has changed.
"I think it's pretty awesome. I think it's going to be very helpful to the environment, but it's also just really cool that they listen to all of these kids," they said.
