Food Waste Reduction Toolkit for Illinois Schools
What’s the problem with food waste in schools?
Over 7 billion school meals are served each year in the United States. Much of this food, however, is currently feeding landfills instead of nourishing students. This is while one in six children is food insecure. When food is landfilled, not only are its nutrients lost, so are all the energy, water, and labor that went into producing, transporting, and preparing it. K-12 schools have a unique role in teaching students to value food instead of wasting it.
The Food Waste Reduction Toolkit for Illinois Schools can help.
The Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that provides all schools, no matter their size or location, the tools to tackle the issue of wasted food. It identifies the main sources of wasted food and offers strategies for food waste prevention, recovery and redistribution, composting, education and engagement, and celebrating success. A variety of solutions are shared–from easy and quick to implement to longer term and more resource intensive.
The Toolkit’s easy-to-use-format allows you to jump in to find the strategies that work for your school. Each section includes case studies that highlight inspirational efforts to reduce food waste in schools across Illinois and provides guidance on:
- Measuring Food Waste
- Preventing Food Waste
- Food Recovery & Redistribution
- Composting Food Scraps
- Education & Engagement
- Communicating & Celebrating Success
- Waste audit guides
- How to determine what to audit in your lunchroom and kitchen
- Food waste tracking in kitchens
- Analyzing waste audit data
- Sourcing food from school gardens and local farms to encourage consumption of healthy foods
- Menu planning and food preparation
- Preventing food waste at the serving line, including Offer versus Serve
- Policies and laws regarding share tables and the redistribution of food (including the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act that supports the donation of recovered food)
- How to set up and operate a share table
- Redistribution of surplus food within a school
- Donation of surplus food to an outside organization or in-school food pantry
- The environmental benefits of composting
- Onsite composting
- Offsite commercial composting
- How to get started composting in your lunchroom
- Hands-on classroom or service learning projects
- Curricula and lessons about food and food waste
- Teaching tools and resources
- Communications within school community
- Communications with the wider community
- Get recognized with programs such as Green Ribbon Schools and the U.S. Food Waste Challenge
The Food Waste Reduction Toolkit for Illinois Schools is a project of the Wasted Food Action Alliance and was developed by Seven Generations Ahead in collaboration with partners from the Wasted Food Action Alliance.
Funding provided by
Food:Land:Opportunity is a collaboration between Kinship Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust and funded through the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust.
