Raise Awarness

1. Students will focus on information from the past few lessons and the resources that were examined. They can refer to their food waste journal to demonstrate their own impact. They can also use this information to determine if they or their family members became less likely to waste food now that it was being tracked.

2. This will help students become more aware of the issues with food how we can work to minimize food waste at home and school.

3. Students can bring awareness to this issue, by creating a school awareness campaign (class talks, posters, school announcements etc.)

*Suggested components for project: Have students connect their awareness campaign to Math & Religion by including connections to math concepts they have learned about in this unit (e.g., data collection) and our faith (e.g., Laudato Si', scripture passages, etc.).

Here are a few tips to help students begin to raise awareness about the topic of food waste:

3. • Plan ahead and buy only what you need. Going to the store without a plan or on an empty stomach can lead to buying more than we need. To keep your kitchen on track, try to eat leftovers, think of meals you might eat out, and avoid unnecessary purchases by planning your grocery list ahead of time.

   • Use your freezer. While there are plenty of benefits to eating fresh food, frozen foods can be just as nutritious. They also stay edible for much longer. A lot of seafood, for example, is frozen before it reaches your supermarket and then thawed and put on display. That means it will only stay fresh for a few days. By buying frozen seafood, you can extend the shelf life of the product considerably. Cooking and freezing food—especially produce—before it goes bad is a great way to avoid having to toss it.

   • Be creative with leftovers. Before you shop, use the food you already have. Websites and apps allow you to search for recipes based on ingredients already in your kitchen.

   • Blend, bake, or boil. Fruits and vegetables that are beyond ripe may not look pretty, but that doesn't mean they can't still taste delicious in recipes. Try using your wilting, browning, or imperfect produce to make sweet smoothies, bread, jams, sauces, or soup stocks.

   • Talk it up. Preventing food waste is the most effective way to shrink its impact on the planet. If we avoid producing food that we don't eat, we can save the land, water, and energy that would have been used to make it. And awareness is a good first step; according to ReFED, educating people about food waste could prevent 7.41 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

   • Use the Love Food Hate Waste Canada website for more information and to help plan to raise awareness.

• Teams can choose to spread their word in a variety of ways (digitally or in person) to anticipate the day(s) of action (e.g. posters, infographics, announcements, advertisements on the school social media accounts).

• When planning is complete, it is time to take action! All the planning has led to this action, remind students to follow their plan and to adapt where necessary (sometimes things happen that are out of our control).

• Raising awareness and bringing about change are the most important action pieces for your event.

• Students' individual performance can be assessed using the "Project Checklist." The teacher will use his/her discretion whether or not to provide a level, numeric or letter score if desired.