A couple in Laval, Que. has sparked a fierce debate over how far schools should go to teach children about environmental responsibility after their six-year-old son was shut out of a kindergarten draw to win a stuffed animal because he had an environmentally unfriendly sandwich bag in his lunchbox.

Marc-André Lanciault said he hadn’t heard of the school’s draw or any environmental policy until his wife, Isabel Théorêt, was making their son Félix a sandwich and he begged them not to put it in a plastic bag.

“He said, ‘No mommy, you can’t do that. Not a Ziploc,’ ” Mr. Lanciault said.

Through tears, the boy told his parents that the school had held a draw to win a stuffed teddy bear and only children who didn’t have any plastic sandwich bags could enter. The family normally uses Tupperware, but it was all in the dishwasher, and so they had packed their son’s ham sandwich in a plastic bag. 

When Mr. Lanciault questioned his son’s teacher, she confirmed the school had staged the draw at a lunchtime daycare and that any student with a plastic sandwich bag was excluded. “You know Mr. Lanciault, it’s not very good for the environment,” the teacher told him. “We have to take care of the our planet and the bags do not decompose well.”

Labels: Theater of the Absurd