By: Emily Grant – Director of Florida Operations
Trade or toss?
Growing up, we started school after Labor Day, and my favorite thing to do was get all my school supplies organized. I still remember the excitement of freshly sharpened pencils and erasers. I suppose it also helped that I liked school too.
Now living in Florida, the school year starts in mid-August, and when I was recently shopping, I got a little chuckle seeing all the school supplies on sale – down to the coolest lunch packs.
I was the kid who sometimes had a packed lunch and sometimes bought lunch in the cafeteria – and like so many others, I never thought about waste. If I didn’t want something, I would toss it or trade it. It wasn’t even on my mind.
School Food Waste, now
Jump to 2024, and that is all I think about – food, waste and how we can do better. Especially at schools. Students are already in a learning environment, and can build great habits early. The World Wildlife Fund has toolkits for teachers and educators, to “transform your cafeteria into a classroom and protect the planet for future generations.”
In Orlando, Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) is doing just that. After receiving a two-year USDA grant to pilot food recovery and composting in select schools in the county, students are learning about waste reduction, share tables and composting.
Since 2021, OCPS has donated over 150,000 pounds of excess food to local nonprofits, with the support of FoodRecovery.org – we hire drivers to transport the donated food, help with the logistics, and make it easy for the district to collect stats.
This amount of food has provided 125,000 meals/snacks to Orlando residents. All simply from collecting edible food from the share table and surplus food from the kitchen. And yes – you read that right, 125,000 meals!
2024 and beyond
This school year, the pilot program continues. As FNS Manager Frank Soltes at Avalon Middle School said, “While I was reluctant at first to try something new, I said let me give it a try. I soon found out how easy and quickly it was to use FoodRecovery.org and input the information. It took less than 5 minutes and the response time was so quick on getting a pick up for the items.”
Frank continues to be a school food waste champion, alongside many of his colleagues, who go above and beyond to reduce waste, improve inventory management, create share tables and make sure everyone is fed.