No Waste, All Taste!

As part of Caterham’s award-winning digital and innovation curriculum EDGE, our First Year launched into their Spring Term project, hungry to find out more! This term’s project is in partnership with Chartwells, our Catering team, and is focused on sustainability and waste reduction in food production and supply using the school as a model. 

To kick off their term-long project, the pupils attended a series of presentations which set out their challenge, to reduce wastage, and the boundaries and guidelines they must adhere to but also the broad scope they have to identify and provide potential solutions.

We look forward to following their progress as they work together to innovate and problem solve!

Here’s what some of our First Years had to say about the project launch:

“We started the day by going into the Humphreys Theatre where we had a talk from some of the Chartwells employees and the Head Chef from our school. During this we found out about the ongoing project of helping the environment that we’re doing but this time changing it from last term’s topic of recycling shoes (Autumn Term) to food waste. They also told us some tips on how to structure our project. Some of these tips were; using a timeline to stay organised and get everything done in time and using good research websites. Some others of these tips were; assessing our team to see what our strengths and weaknesses are, how to come up with ideas on our project and how we should design our menu to make it nutritiously balanced and to make it have as little food waste as possible.

 After we heard about the project and tips on how to organise it we went to go and see the food waste from one day at our school where the First Years had one 13kg tub of food waste whereas the Refectory that served 1300 people had nine 20kg tubs of food waste and got told that every person was wasting an average of 0.12kg/120g of food wasted per person which is quite a lot.

After we saw all of the food waste, we got to go to the Concourse where they had a wonky fruit juice stall could Flawsome. When we were there, they let us try all of their different juices and fizzy drinks that had been made out of wonky fruits that would have been otherwise thrown away. We also got told how our school had partnered with them to use the wonky fruits and vegetables in our school meals and how we could buy the drinks that we got to try in the tuck shop and café. 

Overall, I had a really good time and feel very prepared for the project and the different steps along the way. 

Alex J

Last Tuesday, the First Year were visited by Chartwells.  Chartwells explained to us that how much food we waste each year, and how that affects our environment. A fact that we came back with was that, carbon dioxide was being emitted from our food waste making the environmental danger and temperature rise. We also learnt what we could do to decrease our food waste. We have been told that putting less on your plate could help save the world technically. How could this save the world? Well if we didn’t waste as much food, less carbon dioxide would be emitted to the air, saving a whole lot of climate change from happening. Well how could we complete this task?  We also learnt that growing your own fruit and veg can be better for the environment, putting less on your plate, try to eat more homegrown food and more local foods. Why would that work? Well if we didn’t eat as much shipped food that means less boat fuel would be emitted into the air.  

 After our visit with Chartwells we were taken outside form by form to be shown the food waste by Head Chef Alex. The food waste we saw was almost falling out of some of the tubs! Chef Alex showed us different tubs from breakfast, lunch and dinner. You may wonder how the we plan on reducing our food waste? The chefs have looked at the amount of children eating a certain amount of a meal, and the number of people wasting that much food. You may have wondered in the past, why do we get these tasty meals so often? So here is your answer, they think that the most eaten and less wasted food should be repeated! Our Chefs do such an amazing job in thinking about us and the school so a big thank you goes to Chef Alex! 

 After our interesting chat with Head Chef Alex, we moved down to the concourse where we tried some drinks, juice and smoothies made out of wonky fruits. The brand of which provided us of these samples was Flawsome! Flawsome is a brand who uses wonky fruits to create drinks for everyone to enjoy, this also reduces the food wasted because they are not perfect. There were multiple flavours but the most common one was an Apple and Strawberry drink. There is also sour apple and sweet and sour cherries! Very tasty!

Report by Izzy