Causes

Environment Education Youth development

Posted by

Marjorie D.

Administrative Assistant

Our mission

Cafeteria Culture (CafCu) is an environmental education and advocacy organization, working creatively with youth to achieve zero-waste schools, climate smart school communities, and a plastic free biosphere. Our programs foster youth-led solutions and action on critical sustainability issues. By merging citizen science and civic action with media production and the arts, our students provide an urgently needed urban youth-of-color voice on key environmental issues.

Founded in 2009 as Styrofoam Out of Schools, we catalyzed the complete elimination of plastic styrofoam trays from all NYC public schools and nine other urban school districts in the U.S., resulting in half a billion styrofoam trays per year diverted from landfills, incinerators and student meals. We achieved this goal by working in partnership with students, parents and school food directors, a model we are now expanding upon to rid school cafeterias of all single-use plastics.

What we do

Cafeteria Culture leads cutting-edge, interdisciplinary environmental education that merges citizen science and civic action with the arts and media production. Youth take on leadership roles in their schools and communities to achieve zero waste schools and to reduce plastic pollution. They use their own local data to inform policy and create video shorts and visual campaigns, contributing an urgently needed urban youth voice-of-color to critical environmental issues (follow our YouTube channel, Cafcu Media - 40k subscribers, 25 Million views).

We recently premiered our first feature documentary, Microplastic Madness, an optimistic take on the plastic pollution crisis with a powerful take action message. The movie tells the story of 56 fifth graders from P.S.15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn - most who are living in public housing and all living on the frontline of the climate crisis - whose actions on plastic pollution morph into extraordinary leadership and scalable victories. Their inspiring narrative conveys an urgent, accessible message of informed action and hope.

Microplastic Madness is more than a movie. It's a springboard for youth action! The movie, toolkit, and impact campaign link youth activism to two of the most critical issues of our time, plastic pollution and the climate crisis. The movie is an opportunity to scale up and accelerate plastic free youth-led action with schools across the US and beyond as hubs for change (MIcroplasticMadness.org)

Cafeteria Culture continuously pilots new school curriculum and zero waste methodology, seeking out partner public schools with multiple challenges, then sharing our curriculum for free with a goal to scale it up quickly with under-resourced school communities. Currently, we are piloting climate and zero waste education in several NYC schools in that serve frontline communities with most students living in public housing and shelters.

Thanks to a grant from Patagonia NYC (Bowery store), CafCu recently launched our Youth Advocates Program, expanding after-school plastic-free leadership opportunities and education for youth - primarily alumni of Cafeteria Culture's school programs. Middle and highs school aged youth build upon their previous experiences as change-makers in our programs and lead creative campaigns to promote a deeper understanding of the root causes of plastic pollution and its connection to climate change and environmental justice issues.

Cafeteria Culture's our award winning "Cafeteria Ranger" service learning program, teaches the "why" with the "how" and connects our garbage to climate justice. Students learn to use how their own data to Inform policy, both in school and beyond and take on leadership roles during the lunch period. In 2015, we scaled up this program by sharing it for free with schools everywhere via our multimedia SORT2SAVE.org KIT.