Food Waste in Schools

Introduction

As a kid, you probably would throw away your food without realizing the impact it has on the environment. Maybe if we had known that the food waste created in schools reaches about 530,000 tons annually, we would have thought twice before wasting perfectly good food.

Main Causes

Although free lunches are helpful for students financially, it creates the option for them to take more than they can eat or take what they don’t actually want. Also, in order for the school lunches to be called a meal, students must take fruits and vegetables as well which is most of what they throw away because they don’t want to eat it but are forced to take them. All of these packages multiplied by hundreds of thousands of students and schools creates a lot of extra waste.

Major Impacts

When food products go to waste, it isn’t just the waste of the food that’s a problem, it also wastes the natural resources that helped to create or grow the products. This includes all of the harvest, transport, packaging, energy and water. Most importantly, when the food waste is thrown in the trash, it rots in landfills, and creates the greenhouse gas called methane which is more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, thereby contributing to global warming.

What We Can Do to Help

Instead of taking a school lunch that will end up in the trash, packing lunches from home in reusable lunch bags and containers is a great way to help reduce waste. School lunches contain a lot of waste already just by their packaging, so buying food in bulk and bringing it to school is reducing packaging waste. It is more convenient for students to take school lunches, so schools should find ways to make sure students consume what they take. Whether school lunches are taken at school or brought from home, students should dispose of any food scraps in the compost bin.

Naomi Lewis and Eloise Atkins, 9th grade, Terra Linda High School, San Rafael, California

Learn more about the Painted Bins solution Click Here.

Resources

Pettit, Katelyn. “Addressing School Lunches Could Prevent 530,000 Tons of Waste.” EarthShare, 28 Sept. 2022, www.earthshare.org/how-addressing-school-lunches-could-prevent-530000-tons-of-waste/#:~:text=The%20World%20Wildlife%20Fund%20estimates. Accessed Nov. 27 2023.

Lappathi, Anirud. “Free Lunches Cause Students to Waste More Uneaten Food.” The Californian, www.thecalifornianpaper.com/2021/11/free-lunches-cause-students-to-waste-more-uneaten-food/#:~:text=The%20district. Accessed 28 Nov. 2023.