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As the annual fall potluck in my daughter’s third-grade classroom was ending, it was clear that no one had given much thought to organizing an environmentally-friendly event. The tables, covered in disposable paper cloths, were laden in excess food that would get tossed into the trash. Dozens of plastic water bottles that no one would recycle were piled in one corner. Conventional paper plates, cups and plastic ware filled the garbage cans.

Potlucks are a staple at many schools, and they offer families and educators an opportunity to get together outside of the classroom. Kids can try new foods and make new friends, parents can get to know each other better, and teachers can relax a bit. Despite these positive attributes, potlucks can create a lot of unnecessary waste. Can enlightened mothers help make potlucks more environmentally friendly?

“The most important thing is for parents to communicate why they would want to green up a potluck with the people involved,” said Heather Hawkins a Portland, Oregon mother and co-blogger at enviromoms.com. “If your goal is to reduce waste, it’s important to communicate that to the other people attending,” she added.

What makes a potluck green? That depends on who you ask, but any attempts to cut back on waste, recycle more items, use more durable and sustainable goods and eat more locally grown foods will make a school gathering more environmentally friendly. Individual classrooms, schools, and even school districts may chose different ways to improve potlucks and other school gatherings based on the resources that they have available.

Two mothers at my daughter’s school, the Baker Demonstration School, in Wilmette, Illinois, devised what I will call the Team Green approach to potlucks. They invested in reusable plastic plates and plastic ware using their own resources, and one mother brought in a box of cloth bandanas from her attic to use as napkins and tablecloths. They started to bring their green supplies first to one potluck and then to a larger multi-classroom gathering. Not only did they bring in supplies, they also made large signs for the recycling bins and the garbage bins, and when it came time for clean up, they directed the children to put recyclable items in the recycling bin and trash in the trash bins. At the end of the potluck, the Green duo took the dirty plastic items and bandanas home to wash and put away for the next event. Mothers with kids in other classrooms borrowed the items for subsequent potlucks. By taking charge and making these events more environmentally friendly, this pair of eco-conscious mothers showed other parents that becoming green only takes a small initiative.

Those who attended the potluck were impressed with how easily the greener potluck came together once the two mothers took charge of the event. “All you have to do is let the possibility come in to your experience to see it working,” said Anne Sato, a mother who attended the potluck with her school-age son and daughter.

Other schools may want to set up rules for individual families to follow using a Green Family/Kid approach. A school or a classroom could ban disposable plates or processed food and each family would then send their offspring to a school event with sustainable food in reusable containers along with a plastic or tin plate and cup. At the end of the potluck, the reusable food containers, any extra food, and the durable plates and cups would go home with the child to be washed and reused. Every family is responsible for making each potluck a little greener. The Green Family/Kid way of improving potlucks works well at schools in which all parents want to do something to make events more environmentally friendly, but the school is not set up for one or two mothers to take the lead and change everyone’s behavior.

The most drastic but effective method to make potlucks greener is for a school or a school system to ban disposable goods altogether. Waldorf schools require parents to follow a set of rules for all potlucks, according to MC Milker, a mother from southern California who blogs at thenotquitecrunchyparent.com. “Everyone at the Waldorf School would bring food in a basket,” she said. “We would bring a cake in the pan in which it was baked,” she added. Though her children no longer attend the Waldorf School in her area, she has since become a big fan of using dishcloths rather than aluminum foil to cover baked goods and waxed paper rather than Ziploc bags to store sandwiches. And she is trying to get more parents to catch on to the relative ease of making small but important changes. “I have always tried to encourage people to be more environmentally friendly,” she explained.

The Waldorf School philosophy may be unique, but other private institutions are also banning environmentally unfriendly practices, using the Green Institution approach. Oregon has initiated a state-wide green school certification program, the Oregon green schools program in which schools can be certified for the level of sustainability they achieve [oregongreenschools.org]. In February 2008, the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation-Evanston, my family’s synagogue and the place where my daughter attends Sunday school, opened the doors of its new building-the first LEED-certified house of worship in the US. The synagogue’s board has declared that all events that take place in the new building must be green. So the next time she has a Hebrew school potluck, I will be pulling out the reusable plastic plates and cups from my cabinets, and covering the baked goods in dish cloths as I walk her the two blocks from our home to the new building.

Of course, walking or riding a bike to school is the ultimate way to make a potluck green.

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