Op Ed

Destroy Food Waste

When I walk through the Staples high school cafeteria, I see kids with hamburgers, french fries, and gummy snacks piled up in their hands. It looks like enough food to feed three people. I also see some kids throwing food and leaving it on the floor. We can make changes to better food waste and world hunger, also it’s also a huge problem in schools so we as a community need to help. Students order too much food and don’t finish it all, which ends up in the garbage instead of compost. 

To address the issue of food waste, schools can help reduce food waste by ordering the appropriate amount of food for the student body, and making sure unfinished food goes into a compost bin, and sharing and donating surplus to food shelters. Students throw out food because they don’t eat it all, so the food either rots on the floor or the custodians have to clean it up and if students even throw their food out, they don’t even compost it, and the food just fills up landfills. This seems to be, because no one cares and they’re too lazy. According to Berkenkamp “$1.2 billion per year worth of food is thrown away in schools across the U.S.” Food is being wasted, but people need to look past the fact that it’s just food. It’s money being thrown away and it’s food that a homeless person can eat. According to the podcast Ask The Experts Nutrition: Reducing Food Waste for a Healthier You, they discussed a food recovery hierarchy chart to show where food waste should go. The chart shows solutions, and some of them are to feed hungry people, feed animals, industrial uses, composting, and landfills. “Among low-income households with children who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, only about 15% have been getting those meals, said Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Brookings Institution”. The other 85% of kids don’t get the food because the schools carelessly throw it away. Then a large population of kids miss out on food that they need. Schools need to make a better plan to have the teachers supervise the kids during lunch.

Schools serve too much food and are bad at storing the food. Students waste vegetables and fruit the most, representing more than 50% of their plate waste. In comparison, faculty members waste about 43% of these categories. Students' parents aren’t at school too tell them which foods to eat.. “USDA requires that milk at least be offered at lunch and as a result, many kids wind up with an 8-ounce carton they only partly consume or never open.” Schools frequently provide students more food than they can consume, wasting food. Additionally, the cafeteria lacks the capacity to store food which leads to food waste, because it goes in the garbage.

Currently, Staples high school has compost, recycling, and trash bins, but I don’t see many people using them correctly. Many schools are trying to find many solutions to eliminate food waste and some are working, but most are not. One solution that schools implemented is that students can compost the wasted food. This isn’t enough, because students don’t compost their food. Also, no one is monitoring it. A better solution is that

there should be teachers telling students to compost. More than 60 billion pounds of mineral-rich food go to landfills each year in the U.S. alone. Most of the food being wasted is going to landfills, which is better than going to the ocean. However, this is not working because not every kid throws out their food in the right place. It’s important to know that proper moisture fuels the entire composting process, as the UC Master Gardeners of Monterey Bay share. If food waste were a country, its greenhouse gas emissions would be the third largest in the world, following the US and China. Schools need to enforce the rule of composting and not leaving food on the floor or on the lunch tables.

By purchasing the right quantity of food, being careful to consume it all, and sharing and giving any leftovers to food shelters, students and schools may help prevent food waste. The schools have to do a better job of preparing for the proper servings since students often order too much food and don't eat it all, which ends up in the trash. This change is important to reduce pollution and world hunger.

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