By: The 6th grade Class of 2018-2019 What is Food Waste? Food - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Problem Based Learning: Food Waste By: The 6th grade Class of 2018-2019

What is Food Waste? Food waste is food that gets discarded and thrown away due to deformities, spoilage, and portion sizes. Throwing away food is a HUGE problem in the U.S. It happens when people don’t like the food, don’t like the way it looks, or the way it tastes. Food waste is a major problem all around the world. When we waste food we hurt our environment in many ways.

● Did you know that the food that is wasted each year could fill a football stadium? ● Did you know that an estimated $218 billion dollars each year in schools is wasted because of food waste in America? ● Lastly, did you know an American family of four spends $1,600 annually on food that is never eaten? In 6 years, that family has wasted a college tuition to an in-state public college

At home, during dinner, kids waste food. This is usually because of these things: Food Waste In 1. Kids are being picky and don't want Homes: to eat the food that is made. 2. Parents buy things at the supermarket and don't finish it. (especially food that is frozen-seafood) 3. At parties, people don't eat and finish the food. It turns into leftovers. These are some things that go into food waste.

Packed Lunches: Mothers, fathers and guardians don’t realize how much food that is thrown away. Usually kids throw it away because of the way it looks, or smells. Some ways to resolve this are: ● Making the foods look appetizing. Making foods that kids will ● enjoy. ● Separating foods so the taste does not mix together.

Food Waste at SMS Over a period of two days, the sixth grade students collected data in the cafeteria on food waste. Students were also given a lunch survey regarding school lunches. The following data was collected:

Data Our school students have some different opinions on the cafeteria selections: ● 22% of the kids like the food, but also 22% says they don’t like the food. ● The amount of people that eat all of their food is 40%, and the people who don’t are 22%. Out of 9 people, 4 said that they throw out ● their snacks and 5 people keep their snacks. ● Most people have pizza for lunch. Others bring from home. And some students get swap outs. Swap outs are alternatives to the hot lunch, like hamburgers and pizza.

● We found that most people buy swap out more than hot lunch. ● Students do this because the hot lunch is, according to one participant, is the school lunches are “not good”. ● Most students that buy lunch every day think that we should have more fresh ingredients. ● In personal interviews, we found that many people still buy hot lunch and throw most of it out because they think it does not taste good. This creates more food waste.

● We found that the main reason kids in SMS waste food is that there is not enough time to eat. We have 25 minutes, and we all think that we should have at LEAST 30 minutes.Without enough time, kids end up throwing their lunches away. Other reasons for food waste include: ● Students did not like the taste and often the food is cold and/or soggy. ● The students don’t know what the lunch is going to be. The menu is difficult to find and end up buying a lunch they don’t like, and then throw it away. ● Not enough variety of salad dressings

Survey Questions The following data was collected through our survey

Lunch Sides When we collected the data from the survey, we found that 37.5% of people throw out sides. We think that they do this because the kids said in the survey that they think that the sides aren’t “satisfactory”.

Salad Dressing Students say that if there was a greater variety of salad dressings they would eat more salad. Some suggestions include: ● Italian ● Caesar ● Thousand Island If we added to the selection of dressings, then students would eat more salad, therefore they would be healthier.

Simple solutions to the food waste problem at SMS ● More variety of salad dressings ● Post the menu outside the cafeteria in Spanish ● Get more fresh ingredients ● Add a water station ● More time to eat ● Compost the wasted food and use in the school garden ● Add recycling bins to the cafeteria ● Create a smoothie station using the leftover fruit

We would like to put recycling bins and compost piles by every trash can in the cafeteria because we need to start to recycle. The reason we are planning on doing this is because people don’t recycle. Recycle bins that are clearly labeled and taller would help encourage recycling. We would like to start composting because it is better for the environment. When you throw out the your food, it gets thrown into a dumpster to rot. When you put it in a compost pile it is given back to the environment as fertilizer. We could then use this to put in the garden. Any excess compost could be stored outside the garden.

Labels

This is the layout of the posters on the wall

Today's Food Section is… Breakfast Pancakes and Bacon Swap Out Pizza and Burgers Lunch N Chicken Sandwich

la sección de alimentos de hoy es... Desay (panqueques y tocino) Intercambio (pizza y hamburguesa) Almuerzo (Sándwich de pollo)

diciembre 2018 1 ( domingo ) 2 ( sabado ) 3 ( lunes ) 4( martes ) 5 ( miercoles ) 6 ( jueves ) 7 ( viernes ) Nuggets De pollo Burrito de carne Macaroni y queso Hamburguesa Pepperoni Papa aplastada fruta Fruta Papa Fritas pinwheel Frijoles Verde Verduras fruta Ensalada fruta 8 ( domingo ) 9 ( sabado ) 10 ( lunes ) 11 ( martes ) 12 ( miercoles ) 13 ( jueves ) 14 ( viernes ) Ravioli Frances Tostada Sándwich de queso Sándwich de queso Pizza Bagel Breadstick de Salchicha carne Sopa de Tomate Salada Queso fruta Fruta fruta Fruta verduras 15 ( domingo ) 16 ( sabado ) 17 ( lunes ) 18 ( martes ) 19 ( miercoles ) 20 ( jueves ) 21 ( viernes ) BBQ pollo limón y cereza Tacos Hamburguesa Central Pizza Sándwich pastel Arroz Papa Fritas Verde fruta Country Pollo plato maiz fruta 22 ( domingo ) 23 ( sabado ) 24 ( lunes ) 25 ( martes ) 26 ( miercoles ) 27 ( jueves ) 28 ( viernes ) Vacaciones Vacaciones Vacaciones Vacaciones Vacaciones 29 ( domingo ) 30 ( sabado ) 31 ( lunes ) Vacaciones Vacaciones Vacaciones

Green: Compost Door MAP Blue: Recycling Red: Garbage

We can and should make these changes now for little to no money! In fact, just this week a bill (A4075) passed the NJ Assembly establishing a task force whose purpose is to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030.https://www.tapinto.net/towns/somerville/ sections/government/articles/state-task-force-t argets-food-waste Thank you for listening to our ideas.

ANY QUESTIONS???