This #GivingTuesday, support innovative, youth-led environmental justice education in New York City public schools by donating to Cafeteria Culture. 🌎
Your gift will directly support:
🌟 Student Climate Leadership: Powering up students in under-resourced communities with real world opportunities for environmental leadership.
🌟 Data-Driven Advocacy: Equipping students with the skills to gather data to advocate for change, shifting policy system-wide.
🌟 Creative Messaging: Using art - drawing, video, song, dance, and more - to illustrate and explain complex environmental justice issues to diverse audiences.
Go to the link in our bio to donate! 🫶
Students in our printmaking class at the Lower Eastside Girls Club this winter learned how to do linocut and screenprinting, creating some amazing work! 🎨 Projects ranged in focus but all centered on different environmental issues, including composting, food waste, littering, landfills, and gardens. 🪴🥬 After creating their stamps and screens, the girls used them to decorate posters, postcards, t-shirts, and tote bags. 🎊
🌱♻️ Turn your food scraps into something that helps our community grow!
Bring your food scraps to the Columbia Street Farm and help us create fertile compost for Red Hook soil. Composting helps reduce smelly trash, lowers greenhouse gas emissions, and supports a healthier environment for all of us. 🌎💚
📍 Columbia Street Farm
108 Otsego Street
Corner of Beard & Otsego Streets
🕒 Drop-off bins are open 24/7!
✅ We accept:
•Fruit & vegetables (cooked or uncooked)
•Bread & grains
• Pasta
• Eggshells
•Coffee grounds & filters
• Food-soiled paper
❌ Please DO NOT drop off:
• Food packaging
• Plastic bags
•Meat or bones
•Cheese or milk
Together, we can turn food waste into healthy soil and continue building a greener Red Hook! 🌿
/rhi #Compost #RedHook #Sustainability #FoodWaste #CommunityCompost GreenFuture
Fifth Graders at PS/MS 188 are exploring what the words “environment” and “justice” mean using drawings and word association. 🎨 These terms will be the base of our lessons as they learn about how food waste impacts our health and the environment around us. 🍋🌷
💛🍎 THANK YOU, SCHOOL LUNCH HEROES! 🍎💛
Today we celebrate the amazing people who make school meals happen every day 🙌
School Lunch Hero Day is a national celebration honoring the hardworking cafeteria staff, food service managers, and nutrition professionals who make sure students receive meals that are nutritious, safe, and delicious 🍽️✨
Across the U.S., these heroes serve nearly 30 MILLION students every day through the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program 💪
From early mornings to busy lunch lines, your dedication fuels students to learn, grow, and succeed 🌟
👏 Thank you for everything you do!
👉 Show your appreciation—say THANK YOU to a school lunch hero today!
#SchoolLunchHeroDay #ThankYou #FoodServiceHeroes #SchoolMeals #Gratitude #NYCSchools
Students from PS/MS 132 Juan Pablo Duarte and Queens School of Inquiry are celebrating running successful Mindful Choice Meals (MCM) Days! 🌱 They got hands-on experience collecting data and creating change in their cafeterias by participating in MCM this April. 📊 By running waste audits to compare their food waste on MCM Day to a normal day, schools across NYC’s 32 school districts have found that MCM reduces food waste and increases food consumption. 🌟
MCM is a student‑centered initiative that helps students make informed choices at the lunch line, learn about USDA Offer vs. Serve guidelines, and take only what they plan to eat. 🍎 By pairing food education with clear menu communication, MCM supports students in wasting less, eating more, and building lifelong habits around food and sustainability. 🌎
In their final semester with Cafeteria Culture, 8th Graders from PS/MS 188 are learning how to gather data to make community change. 📊 Recently, they talked with their neighbors about environmental issues they noticed on the Lower East Side, like a lack of green space, litter, and difficulty accessing fresh foods. 🌳🫐 Using this data, they will explore solutions to these issues and advocate for change. 💡
This week is National #PlasticFreeLunch Day! 🦋 Across the country, hundreds of thousands of students will be taking part in local climate action for #EarthDay by eliminating single-use plastics from school lunches. 🍝 To learn more, go to our Plastic Free Lunch Day toolkit, available for free and linked in our bio. 📝
If you participate, tag us in your posts – we’d love to see what you are doing! 📸
Did you know that we have a toolkit designed to help you easily run a cafeteria waste audit with your students, just like the students are doing in this video from #MicroplasticMadness? 🔬
To get the free toolkit and participate in #PlasticFreeLunch Day next week, April 20-24, 2026, go to on.nyc.gov/psWasteAudit, where you will find an index listing every resource available to you to gather data with your students about the waste from your cafeteria! 🍎
At PS 15 this fall, students composted their food waste on campus! 🍊🥑 After collecting food scraps from the cafeteria, students helped to process the scraps by chopping them up, mixing them with browns to help them break down, and regularly spun the tumbler. 🪱🍄
Fourth Graders from PS 15 recently testified at the New York City Council’s Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management’s hearing and did an incredible job! 🗣️🥳 They shared where their neighborhood’s trash goes and how the city’s trucking-based waste system contributes to air pollution in Red Hook and unfairly harms health in other communities like Virginia where many landfills are located. 🚛💨 They explained that by doing Mindful Choice Meals in their school cafeteria, they stop waste before it starts and locally compost the remaining food scraps within walking distance at Red Hook Farms. 🌱☀️
