Rubbish Free Lunches

This sounds like a great idea and I am sure the schools around Oz are proud to have come up with it. Kids bring lunches to school that do not leave the school with any rubbish, such as wrappers, plastic spoons, and Ziploc bags. Ideally, the kid brings the snack and main dish in containers, and a piece of fruit, whose leftover pit or seeds, if any, are thrown in the compost bin. This scenario is ideal, but nowadays it is most unrealistic. There will always be rubbish, and the school would do better to ask kids and parents to minimize the amount of rubbish produced. Cheese, yoghurt, cracker snacks, fruit snacks, they ALL come in some recyclable container, and if the kid throws it out at school or at home, it will make no difference for the environment. What makes a difference is if containers are recycled and what ways to find to reduce the amount of recyclable rubbish by buying larger containers maybe. But the school counts the rubbish-free lunches and gets points that downstream translate into green stars for the school, and whatever accolades further down... The stars should be for deferring rubbish home instead of school, an unrealistic goal, and a misleading way of teaching kids to keep a clean environment. Today's picture is that of a huge orb spider who keeps the rubbish in his own web, until rain decomposes it completely.