Last August we highlighted Beye Elementary’s quest to reduce single-use items in their school lunchroom by switching to reusable foodware. Oak Park Elementary School District 97 parents and co-founders of the consultancy Less is More (LIM), Lauren Smith-MacGregor and Kara Finnegan, recently updated the ZWS team on the exciting progress the district has made this school year. Here are just a few of the sustainability successes from this year:
- District 97 partnered with Plastic Free America to receive a subsidy to purchase reusable utensils for all 10 schools. The switch from single-use plastic sporks is in progress and all schools will be rolled out by the end of the month. For those schools without dishwashers, the food service manager has created a system to sanitize the utensils.
- Three of 10 schools now have functional dishwashers and use washable trays. The Facilities Advisory Committee is working with administration to evaluate options to repair existing units and to replace or install dishwashers in the remaining schools as part of the 10-Year Master Facilities Plan.
- All schools plan to have two-way share tables up and running by the end of the school year.
The Beye student green team continues to share their award winning One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest film, The Dishwasher Quest. The film was featured three times during the 2026 One Earth Film Festival last month and was screened alongside the feature film Plastic People at the Evanston Public Library. In addition, the student green team also presented at Academy for Global Citizenship and at BUILD in Chicago. Green Team members were part of a panel discussion following the screening. These were incredible opportunities for the film’s message to be seen and discussed by audiences throughout the Chicago area.
In addition to being screened at the OEFF/OEYFC events this year, The Dishwasher Quest was also chosen as a feature film at the Lighthouse Studio/C3 Climate Change Film Challenge, a youth focused film festival held on April 22, in Charlottesville, VA.
The film was also selected to be in the Little Fort Film Festival June 20-21 in Waukegan, IL. Read this recent newsletter article for more details about D97’s efforts to reduce waste, use resources responsibly, and empower students to be part of the solution.
