Stop Schools From Wasting Food

  • by: Tuesdae Masse
  • recipient: Maine Department of Education, Governor Lepage

Every day I watch as a more than half of the children in my school toss away perfectly good food at the end of lunch. After a while I noticed the same child getting lunch and not eating a single thing on their plate. I asked why she did not eat and she told me because she doens't like anything and she eats when she goes home. I said why do you take the food if you know you will not eat it. She told me she was forced to take it because she receives hot lunch. I watched this child day in and day out among others throw away seald foods like cheese sticks, yogurts, crackers, sandwiches, milks,pretzles, juices and more. On top of the sealed products they tossed away apples, oranges, bagels, bananas etc. Now there is a difference between things such as lettuce and food that is opened like pease. To waste things like the above list is disgusting, most of the students I see in a day do not have these foods at home and some may not know if they will have dinner that night. So my next issue was that I noticed one student who wanted anothers unopened snack crackers and was told no by the teacher on duty. So we force our children to take food and don't allow them to give it to another child who will eat it, we force them to throw it away they are not even allowed to bring it home. I have estimated that out of a school with roughly 220 studnets like mine, on average 62,000 items are wasted each school year. This estimate consists of only items that are packaged that can be salvaged, this doesn't take into account things that are not packaged such as fruits. If you look into statistics from different food banks you will see in general, it costs $2.41 per box of food which is about a pound of food. Given that the majority of foods wasted in schools are light weight items this would allow our food banks to add more items for families. I believe that the waste in our school lunch programs needs to stop and these guidelines that prevents us from saving these foods needs to be reconsidered. Our communities are throwing away food that our neighbor down the road could use and we do nothing about it.

Sign Petition
Sign Petition
You have JavaScript disabled. Without it, our site might not function properly.

Privacy Policy

By signing, you accept Care2's Terms of Service.
You can unsub at any time here.

Having problems signing this? Let us know.