Canteen Waste Report by Eco School Committee

One of our goals was to do a cafeteria report to analyse the amount of waste produced only by the cafeteria for DP and MYP. We firstly separated the trash by food waste and other waste so that we can get a better idea of what is producing the most waste in the school, but also how many students don’t finish their food on average. We then weighed both of the bins every week after the DP and MYP lunchtime to see how much they produced.

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Results

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After weighing for a week, we have put the results into a table and have calculated the total of waste that week and we have found that our school produced 45.74kg of waste in just one week, if we consider that around the same waste is produced every week, then we can conclude that our school produces around 1646.64kg of cafeteria waste (food and other) per school year, which is more than 1.5 tonnes of waste.

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Average

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To detail our report, we calculated the average food and other waste created per day and how much average food and other waste a student produces per day. To better understand the proportions of the waste we put it in plate scale, to fully understand how much, on average, a student leaves out food per day.

On average, a plate full of food weighs around 200 to 220 grams, dividing it by the student average, we can calculate that, on average, students that use the canteen food waste half of their food on their plate. This is a horrible statistic that we hope we will be able to further investigate and improve to lower our school’s footprint on the environment.

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Sources:

Hommes, Stijn. “How Many Grams Does a Typical Home Food Weigh? For Example, If I Serve Myself a Plate of My Home Food, Does It Weigh around 100gr or 350 Gr?” Quora, 2021, www.quora.com/How-many-grams-does-a-typical-home-food-weigh-For-example-if-I-serve-myself-a-plate-of-my-home-food-does-it-weigh-around-100gr-or-350-gr#:~:text=Since%20a%20standard%20serving%20of. Accessed 13 May 2023.

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whole, The dount. “How Many Pounds Is the Average Meal?” Www.thedonutwhole.com, 20 Dec. 2022, www.thedonutwhole.com/how-many-pounds-is-the-average-meal/#:~:text=In%20terms%20of%20weight%2C%20a. Accessed 13 May 2023.

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