Archive: Around Town

Lansing Middle School Student Council officers Abby (President) Nathan (Treasurer) Alex  (Secretary) Destiny (Vice President) brought an odd looking eating utensil to Monday's Board Of Education meeting that they hope will reduce waste in their school cafeteria.  The Council is purchasing 500 of the utensils that they hope will replace plastic forks, knives and spoons that are currently used.

"Are you aware that 50% of the plastic we use is used once then thrown away?  This takes place in our own cafeteria," Destiny told the board.  "We have addressed this issue and have been working on introducing a new, reusable utensil in the middle school."

Council members held a school-wide competition to name the metal utensil, which has a combination of tines, a scoop and a serrated edge for cutting.  By using a single utensil to replace separate knives, forks and spoons there will be one third of the utensils to wash.  The winner was 'Spoodle'.

"Spoodles are left-handed-friendly," observed Middle School Principal Jeff Evener.

"The utensil was invented by the father of a friend of the daughter of a Lansing seventh grade math teacher," said Student Council Advisor Stacey Kropp.  "When he passed away he left a storage locker of 24,000 unpurchased spoodles.  We are buying 500 of those."


Christian Shaw and Gordon Middleton told the council about the state of plastic pollution in Lansing and around the world last December.  They sampled their own water and found toxic plastic pollution when it was analyzed.  The student council decided to try to replace plastic sporks (a combination of a fork and spoon) with something reusable.

Student council members met some resistance from the cafeteria staff, who told them that in the past when metal utensils were used students tended to throw them away instead of returning them to be washed.  But Council members were persuasive, saying they are hopeful the spoodles will not be thrown in the trash.

Council members told the school board they hope their initiative is picked up by the other two schools in the district.

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