Parkway Schools Experiments With Compostable Lunch Trays

Students from six Parkway School District schools will say goodbye to styrofoam lunch trays. A new pilot program kicking off the week of Sept. 24 will replace the trays with  new ones made of 100 percent recycled paper fibers, which are 100 percent compostable.

Bellerive, Craig, McKelvey and Ross elementary schools, as well as Northeast Middle and Parkway North High, will begin testing the new trays, which are American-made at a facility in Hammond, Ind..

The project is funded by the St. Louis Jefferson Solid Waste Management District, and will use a new commercial composting service which will allow the trays to be disposed along with food scraps in separate yellow bins. The trays will then be transported to a local composting facility, in which they will be turned into a “nutrient-rich soil.”

“This process is much more environmentally preferable than to disposing into a landfill,” said a Parkway School District release. “The waste is turned into a usable product that can go back into the earth.  Another environmental benefit is that this form of composting doesn’t create methane like in landfills.”