East Hills resident Celia Ayenesazan said he didn’t even know her daughter Ariella knew what a petition was, let alone how to write one.
But in mid March, the Harbor Hill Elementary School second grader returned with one she had written imploring the school to change its lunch trays from Styrofoam to a more biodegradable, plastic-like material.
“She came home one day with a petition on her own,” Celia said. “She got a bunch of her friends and a few of her teachers to sign it. I didn’t tell her about it, I didn’t tell her to do it. She just did it.”
But the petition, a single sheet of loose-leaf paper with a brief list of names and addresses scribbled in black marker, stretched beyond the parameters of Ariella’s second-grade classroom – it actually worked.
Elizabeth McLoughlin, who manages the Roslyn School District’s food services, said Monday that plastic trays have replaced Styrofoam ones at each of the five schools in the district.
“I was so excited when I found out they were going to change it,” Ariella said. “I came home and jumped up and down. I was so happy. I jumped around with my mom.”
McLoughlin said the initiative was not the first instance in which the food services department has tried to use more eco-friendly materials in the lunchroom.
But, she said, it has so far been the most successful.
“We tried it right when I started here about six years ago, and it was terrible. It was this recycled brown-colored tray and it leaked,” she said. “Ariella and her mom asked me about it recently and then I found this one at a food show.”
Ariella first learned about the differences between Styrofoam and plastic trays while reading the newspaper with her mother and finding a story about a similar initiative started by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg before he left office last year.
She then asked a server at her Chinese after-school program why he gave her miso soup in a plastic cup, rather than one made from Styrofoam.
“They said, ‘no, no, no, that’s not good,’” Ariella said. “Then he gave me a plastic container.”
But where did Ariella learn about petitions?
From her mother and father, she said, who helped petition the Village of East Hills in November 2013 to limit street parking in their neighborhood that came from nearby businesses on Glen Cove Road.
“I thought, if New York City is doing it, why can’t we do it at the Roslyn schools?” Ariella said. “So I wrote a petition.”
Celia then e-mailed McLoughlin, who said Monday that even though the new trays are costlier than the Styrofoam ones – she declined to disclose the exact price differential – the issue went beyond matters of money.
“We used to do a plate and a tray at the middle school, so hopefully that will help offset costs,” she said. “But it helps the environment and the children are on board.”
Roslyn’s next step would be to also replace the district’s Styrofoam cups and bowls to plastic ones, an initiative that McLoughlin said could get done districtwide by the start of school in the fall.
“We currently have a number of them still in stock, so we’re going to use up our supply and then change them all over, she said.”
