Hawthorne Elementary School in Elmhurst has found a way to get students excited about recycling, by hosting its second waste-free lunch day this school year Wednesday.

The waste-free day is an attempt to teach the school and students to be more environmentally sustainable, Hawthorne PTA Go Green Committee co-chair Lisa Gerhold-Dirks said.

The days are held once a month, with hope that the efforts and attitude will become an everyday occurrence by next school year.

“Until this year, there was so much styrofoam,” Gerhold-Dirks said.

The campaign is fairly simple: Instead of brown bags and plastic forks, students are encouraged to bring lunchboxes and washable forks on waste-free days. Students are asked to avoid individually wrapped items and strive to be a member of the “clean-plate club” before lunch is over.

Although statistics can vary by what lunch is being served, how much students eat, and how much liquid goes into recycling, the waste-free campaign has lowered baseline trash weights by 30 to 50 percent since going into effect.

Another estimate said if all Hawthorne students made a commitment to a more sustainable lunch every day, it would eliminate more than 10,000 pounds of trash during the school year.

Each waste-free day is complete with a presentation from faculty on the life of a plastic fork from pollutant-heavy manufacturer to landfill.

The presentations seem to work, with buzz words like “pollution” drawing a chorus of boos from students and “recycle” gaining high praise.

“I think it’s good to go green and for people to recycle, it’s good for the environment,” third-grader Luke Georgiev said. “It’d be nice if lots of people helped the environment, like ride a bike instead of driving a car.”

With the campaign seeing success at Hawthorne, Gerhold-Dirks hopes the initiative, which started at Emerson Elementary, will spread to other Elmhurst schools.

“The goal is to get kids thinking about and telling their parents about this,” she said. “It’s ongoing education to raise awareness to make a difference in one school ... thinking about the little changes they can make in their daily routines that can have a large impact.”