Photo: Casey Lehman.
Every year Swedish school dining halls which are serving the pupils their lunch throw away food worth more than 27 million dollars, according to a new study made by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Not only is this a waste of money, but these up to 30 000 tons of vegetables, meat and fish (“natural” waste such as potato peel or fish bones was not included) also require a lot of resources and cause great emissions when they are produced.
The study shows that the losses could be cut down to around 50 percent. This would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions with up to 30 000 tons of CO2-equivalents per year.
Transparent containers
One of the ways of making the pupils throw away less food is to make the amount of food that is actually left in the garbage more visible. Carola Magnusson, who is running a private operator supplying schools with ecological food, says that one of the schools started out with a hole in a steel bench, where a black trash bag was attached. The food that was thrown in there just sort of “disappeared”. But when they instead started using transparent containers, the pupils could see how the garbage was accumulating, she says. The food is also made from scratch, and leftovers are used to make new food, tomato soup being put in the pasta sauce, dry bread becoming crumbs for meatballs. In this way food waste has halved. But lastly, say the experts, there is a really good secret of reducing waste: To make tasty food.
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