The Love Food Hate Waste Campaign has launched four food waste lesson plans that can be used by primary or intermediate schools to explore the issue of food waste and how it can be minimised.

The issue of food waste is attracting increasing global attention due to its environmental, social and economic impacts. One-third of all of the world’s food produced goes to waste. If food waste was a country, it would be third behind the US and China in terms of carbon emissions.

When food is thrown away it ends up being buried in a landfill. Here it decomposes without oxygen, and releases methane – a harmful greenhouse gas which is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This greenhouse gas traps and absorbs heat which slowly over time is raising the earth’s temperature.

In New Zealand, food waste audits show that the average family throws away three shopping trolleys worth of edible food every year. On a national scale, that’s 122,547 tonnes of food waste just from homes alone, going to landfill every year costing us $872 million every year. That’s not even including the food that supermarkets throw away!

The lessons which link to the New Zealand curriculum promote the issue of food waste in a fun and engaging way and focus on an aspect of food waste which schools often grapple with – the half eaten apple.

 

Click here for the schools resources and lesson plans.

Click here to learn how you can reduce food waste in schools.

 

The Love Food Hate Waste provides additional resources on this issue here. https://lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz/food-waste/resources/