A selection of children from the School Council arranged to meet with the School caterers to find out how planet friendly the food the children have at lunch is. They asked a series of questions from the Energy Sparks questionnaire and discovered that although there are areas that can be developed further, our caterers have a good awareness and understanding of the importance of being planet friendly.
There is at least one vegetarian meal option every day and all meal options on a Monday are meat free. The caterers try to buy foods in limited packaging and where they can, they buy organic produce. As a school we have asked for ice cream ( a treat on a Friday) to be served from large tubs rather than in individual pots to save packaging waste. Yoghurt is also delivered in large tubs rather than individual pots.
The menus are designed in consultation with nutritionists. We order the number of vegetarian/meat meals we need each day to avoid waste where possible. If we know that there are going to be lots of children off, we reduce the number of meals we order accordingly. Any left over food is put into food waste rather than landfill. Raw peelings and egg shells are also recycled.
The catering staff reported that they do not put lids on saucepans but this is something they will consider doing to save energy wastage. They tend to use large steamer ovens rather than saucepans as these are more energy efficient for cooking large quantities of food such as pasta etc.
The food is prepared and cooked off site and brought to school each lunchtime. It it transferred to a heated trolley and served from there. The trolley is turned on 15 mins before the food arrives and switched off as soon as the food has all been served so it is on for about 45 mins to an hour each school day.