School Cafeterias Harbor Opportunities for Food Waste Alleviation by Core Shift

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Gustya Indriani May 17, 2016 06:12 Fellow 1 \| Share via:	Great idea - engaging children, as well as educating them, in tackling climate change will be a good investment for their future (and the Earth's!). To ensure that students know not only about how not wasting food will help their environment, but also about how to create a healthy eating habit, would it be possible to include them since the beginning of the process? For example they receive information about how choosing and eating healthy food (less meat) will support tackling climate change, and the students can give ideas on what healthy food they want to be available at school. Having their favourite/chosen food on their trays will increase the possibility of they eating the food.
Petra Pocanic May 19, 2016 09:58 Catalyst 2 \| Share via:	Hello, thanks for your proposal! (I have just lost a very long comment of your project and hope to rewrite it entirely). As already mentioned by Gustya it is a good idea to engage children through the school system and doing it with a competition/game could ensure their engagement and motivation as well as activate conversation about food waste issues among them. Also, through children you can reach their parents and change their behavior too - as crazy as it can sound, we are our parents and we, as children, are repeating what we see them doing. This is very important to ensure new habits are being continued also when a child leaves a system that supports them (for example when leaving to a new school). Also, parents can become agent of change and initiate changes in these new environments their children are part of. To give you an example, a kindergarten in my town is serving locally produced and healthy food to children. There are no fixed meals but children choose by themselves how much they want to eat. This is monitored by the kitchen staff which based on eating patterns can make better decisions on how much food to prepare. In that way food waste is being reduced, local farmers are included in the chain and kids are changing their eating habits - they prefer rough veggies to sweets for snack! The problem arises when they go to school where food waste and unhealthy habits are a norm. All the effort is gone but this parents could become agents of change in this new environments (if educated and informed) (parents can move mountains for their children). You can use the see-through lunch tray as communication and educational tool. Think about how and what to communicate - otherwise there is the risk parents will throw the food anyway. Including some sort of messages or maybe engaging them in a home-competition will work (for example making new recipes out of left overs they could share with other parents and connect in order to empower them as future agents of change). Think also about the competition rules. Even though compost is benefiting the farmers, it should not reward those making more of it since our goal should be first to reduce waste and then, if other mechanisms are not working or failed, recycle it. The trash bins could be a powerful visualization tool. Have you thought of making them interactive? (for example information changing with the amount of trash?) Try to make a quick prototype of the lunch tray, trash bins and competition to give more details and structure to the 'actions' section. It could help also with the estimation costs (which is needed!). Think also a bit about the Pitch sentence since food waste, as you know, is not only linked to methane's impact on climate change. Maybe some inspirations and ideas here: https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/how-might-we-give-children-the-knowledge-to-eat-better/winner-announced I hope I included all I did in the previous comment I've lost :D Keep up the good work Petra
Rob Mateo May 24, 2016 09:07 Member 3 \| Share via:	this is a great initiative! the u.s. and other first world countries could and should be leading the way in reducing our vast amounts of waste. i can confidently back this if you can address two of my personal concerns: 1) to be a significant solution, just about every school lunch room in the u.s. must participate in the program. america's schools are currently suffering a funding inequality or even funding poverty due to the way that state funding tends to be distributed. some of these schools don't even have the money to provide a proper school lunch program. how are poor schools, who barely have enough to keep the school running, going to afford the initial costs of participation? https://news.wbhm.org/npr_story_post/2016/americas-schools-money-problem/ http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_clb.asp 2) parental influence plays a large part in your initiative. for families that are below or fighting to stay above the poverty line, how are they to find time to participate if they're working two or three minimum wage jobs just to keep the lights on and food in the refrigerator? http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=parental-involvement-in-schools http://www.epi.org/publication/five-social-disadvantages-that-depress-student-performance-why-schools-alone-cant-close-achievement-gaps/ in general, i applaud the concept of reducing food waste, but i don't see the socioeconomic or political obstacles to implementation addressed, when broad adoption is critical to the success of your program.
Craig Wilson May 27, 2016 12:54 Member 4 \| Share via:	This is good.
Beatriz Garzon May 31, 2016 12:37 Member 5 \| Share via:	It is very interesting proposal, Information about how to manage waste is necessary to reduce our food waste and to keep a sustainable environment, the families have to bear in mind how eating habits are important to keep wellness and healthy future...
Dwi Tiya Jul 31, 2016 04:12 Member 6 \| Share via:	Lot of issues are not addressed. Where would the school store the enormous amount of waste while it is being composted?it is not like they have a lot of unused real estate. What are the health hazards, in composting the waste locally? What are the costs associated with doing this by the school? Where does the funding for that come from? One would think that educating the children on avoiding waste, by taking only what they need on their plates, and thus enabling less food to be produced, would be a better way. See how it is done in third world countries, where they cannot afford to throw food away. Arranging for left overs to quickly go to a local food bank for the homeless/itinerant would be better than composting.
Dwi Tiya Jul 31, 2016 04:12 Member 7 \| Share via:	Lot of issues are not addressed. Where would the school store the enormous amount of waste while it is being composted?it is not like they have a lot of unused real estate. What are the health hazards, in composting the waste locally? What are the costs associated with doing this by the school? Where does the funding for that come from? One would think that educating the children on avoiding waste, by taking only what they need on their plates, and thus enabling less food to be produced, would be a better way. See how it is done in third world countries, where they cannot afford to throw food away. Arranging for left overs to quickly go to a local food bank for the homeless/itinerant would be better than composting.