When people think of food waste, they usually think about restaurants, food prepared or stored at home, and leftovers that’ll eventually go uneaten and thrown away. Food waste can occur anywhere and even impact schools. If you ever have a chance, at the end of lunch or the end of the day and look at the trash cans around the cafeteria. How much food do you see there? How much of it goes eaten? How much of it goes uneaten?
Why is food wasted?
Food is wasted due to the quality of the food (that may be extremely questionable at times) that is served in school. Another reason that food is wasted is due to the requirement that students have to get a fruit or vegetable as part of their meal.
The impact:
Uneaten food goes to waste and students are taught it is acceptable to waste food. A lot of money and resources that are used to create school food go to waste as a result and impact the quality and money used to create cafeteria food.
What can we do?
Here is a list of things that we can do to reduce food waste:
-Compost uneaten food
-Food that is untouched (ie fruits and milk cartons as long as they’re preserved properly) can be washed and saved for tomorrow to give out to students who may want a snack
-Any leftover food (i.e. cafeteria food) that is unopened can be sent to shelters where people can consume the food due to scarcity
-Post signs near food: Take only what you will eat/drink
Take a look at your fridge. What is in it? No matter how little or how much there is inside, you contribute to our countries food waste habits. Food waste is when food is “lost” or uneaten. Food is lost when the produce is no longer in good shape and producers must throw it away.
The uneaten food is caused by many reasons! One can be that people serve themselves too much food. Another way we may waste food is when people cook too much food, and nobody eats it. This doesn’t only happen in homes, it happens in restaurants too! There are many reasons to why a lot of food is uneaten. Do you remember throwing any food away? Was it still good to eat? Or was it rotting?
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When you have a meal on your plate, a snack like chips or a drink remember that food waste also includes the wrappers and packages it comes in.
The next time you serve your food remember these shocking facts because we count on you to protect our important resources!
We are using this platform to talk to y’all about an issue that we think is important to learn about especially while you are still in school. Hopefully by the end of this you will learn a thing or two about Food Waste and be able to spread the knowledge.
When we throw away food it will go to landfills where it just sits there for many decades while it is releasing dangerous chemicals into the air. Food Waste will weaken our planet and it will become harder for us to live here.
If we waste too much food we will eventually run out of resources that we need to survive like farms, plants, meat, trees etc.
An example of this would be less food going to places that have a large amount of poverty and where people often do not have any food to eat unlike us
We have to be able to manage our resources and food to make sure that we do not run out anytime soon. We are eating so much food and wasting so much of it that could be put to good use!
Food Waste Solutions
Manage Your Food
Make sure to know how much food you are going to buy or eat.
This will help you not buy more food than you will actually eat and also you won’t serve yourself more food than you wanted.
Check Expiration Dates
Three Types of Labels
Make sure not to throw away food before it expires!
1. Best By/ If Used By… means at the date it has is when the food is at its best.
2. Use by… means that after the date the food is not expired but just won’t taste at its best.
3.Expires On… means that after that date the food is not longer usable and you should throw it away.
If you keep track of these dates you’ll be able to make the most out of your food and not throw away any edible food. Remember to check those dates!
Don’t Be Picky!
Remember that most of the food you are served is edible and you should always try your best to eat all of it. If you really don’t like certain toppings or veggies try to store them in the fridge for others who may use it.
Try to save food for later use and try to avoid throwing it away.
This could be something as simple as not finishing a bag of your favorite Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and wrapping them up and saving them for tomorrow!
Additional ways to reduce food waste could be found on the source website Greener Ideal
When you are going to throw away your food it is important to dispose of it in the right type of bin.
This is a short video by the site Recycle Now about how food waste is recycled (:
When you throw away food into the COMPOST bins they are collected and sent to factories where it can go through 2 processes
In-Vessel Composting is where the food is shredded and mixed with garden waste to keep in a container for a few weeks where it is prepared to use in agriculture to grow plants using soil.
2. Anaerobic Digestion uses a process to break down the food to create bio-gas that can be used for electricity, heat or gas for transportation.
Plugged In 