Boulder Valley is one of nine districts around the country that took part in a World Wildlife Fund school lunch food waste audit, which found a district student tosses an average of 43 pounds of food a year.
A report on the audits, conducted in the spring of 2019 at 46 schools in eight states, was released this month. Along with the audits, participating schools used the Food Waste Warrior conservation curriculum to help students understand the connections among food, waste, natural resources and wildlife habitat.
“Reducing food waste is important for the same reasons we compost and recycle,” said Ann Cooper, Boulder Valley’s food services director. “As schools, as we think about what the next generation needs to know, this is super important.”
Nationwide, an estimated 30% to 40% of food is wasted, while more than 41 million people go hungry, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Wasting food also wastes water, energy and wildlife habitat.
“We throw away enough food to feed the planet,” Cooper said. “Nutrition insecurity, food production and climate change — it’s all one big piece of the puzzle. Agriculture is one of the biggest contributors of climate change. Are we producing food that nobody is eating?”
After participating in the food audits and the education efforts, the participating cafeterias reduced their food waste by an average of 3%, according to the study. If food waste in schools nationwide was reduced by 3%, it would be the equivalent of taking 12,400 passenger vehicles off the road for one year, according to the study.
Laura Smith, Boulder Valley food services special projects contractor, coordinated the audits at five district schools and spoke about the project on a panel last week in the House of Representatives as part of the efforts of the bipartisan Congressional Food Recovery Caucus.
“There’s interest in cost savings and food recovery and what impacts schools can have,” she said.
The district has several initiatives in place to reduce food waste, including more than 35 schools that compost as part of Eco-Cycle’s Green Star Schools zero-waste education program.
The district for years also has bought bulk milk instead of the typical cartons, allowing students who want milk to self serve. Water is available for those who don’t like milk.
The food audits found Boulder Valley students only throw away about 3% of the milk they take, compared to 30% to 40% in other districts. In other districts, the study found, some teachers and food service workers also were giving every student a milk carton because they didn’t know U.S. Department of Agriculture rules allow students to decline milk and still have a fully reimbursable meal.
The district also has salad bars where students can choose which fruits and vegetables they want and “share bins” for uneaten whole fruit that can be served again. Elementary school menus also generally include cut fruit instead of whole fruit, which district data shows reduces waste.
Jeremy Papasso/Staff Photographer
A monitor shows how many pounds of waste accumulate during lunch in the cafeteria at Douglas Elementary School on Monday in Boulder.
To tackle food waste from the kitchen side, Boulder Valley in 2017 added Leanpath, a food waste reduction system, to the district’s three production kitchens. The company’s food waste data collection system also is used on college campuses and by Google in its employee cafes.
“We really significantly reduced waste,” Cooper said.
More recently, the district has added six systems, with two more on the way, in school cafeterias to educate students about how much food they’re throwing away. The district used money from several grants to buy the systems, which include an automated scale and track food waste data. Daily and weekly totals, plus facts about the impact of food waste, are displayed on a large screen as students toss their uneaten food.
“We really try to make it meaningful for students,” Cooper said.
The food audits found that elementary students throw away the most food. One likely reason is portion sizes are the same, though younger elementary students typically eat less than older ones. By middle school, students are eating more and throwing away less.
Making sure students use the correct bins is another challenge. At Boulder’s Douglass Elementary, head custodian Rick Berry helps students pick the correct bins as they finished their lunches — liquid waste, compost, recycling or regular trash.
At all the schools, students were encouraged to get involved and provide suggestions for the best ways to run the audits.
For Boulder Valley middle and high schools, an “aha” moment was that moving all the scattered food waste containers to one location in the cafeteria allowed students to see the full amount of waste generated each day. High schools also proved more challenging to audit because so many students eat in locations other than the cafeteria or off campus.
Teachers reported that the most challenging part of the project was finding the time to teach the related lesson plans to students as well as to help with the audits during lunch.
One way the district is making it easier for other schools to try food waste audits is through a toolkit teachers can check out from the district’s science materials warehouse.