Making children aware of the fight against waste with Too Good To Go

Launched in 2016, the Too Good To Go, anti-food-waste movement has created a food-waste awareness program for elementary school children. The aim of the program is to raise their awareness to food-waste issues by providing educational tools in the classroom, as well as during the lunch break and longer extracurricular times, such as recreation centers.

The children are assigned four missions during the school year. When they complete each mission, they have to decorate an interactive poster:

• Mission 1: The big food waste quiz. The children take a food-waste quiz, then fill out the corresponding poster with the correct answers. For example, they have to guess the amount of food wasted in the world per second, i.e. 41 tons, and stick the corresponding number of elephants on the poster (in this case, 7)
• Mission 2: The bread route. The children are required to put the bread production
  stages in the correct order, from wheat to baguette, and stick the corresponding images on the poster. They then have to guess the energy resources required at each stage of the production process, and stick the images symbolizing these different elements (e.g. a drop of water).
• Mission 3: Canteen staff interviews. The children and educators draft a questionnaire for the canteen staff. The questions are related to nutrition and kitchen-team assessment. After interviewing the staff member of their choice, the children fill out a kind of identity card which they then stick on the poster.
• Mission 4: Taking action. The last poster features a concrete action taken by the children: a commitment charter, the weigh-in report, etc.

Activities are also offered over longer extracurricular periods, such as during summer camp. These activities focus more particularly on anti-waste tips, to be implemented particularly at home, and are structured around several themes: ugly-looking fruits and vegetables, food preservation, anti-waste recipes, etc.

At Champfleury elementary school, Elior feeds nearly 300 children a day in the canteen. For the city of Carrières-sous-Poissy, environmental issues are a priority from an early age. This is why Elior offered the school the opportunity to be one of the 8 pilot sites testing the Too Good To Go initiative in France.

The Elior group is already committed to limiting food waste every day. In Carrières-sous-Poissy, various solutions have already been implemented to avoid food waste. Taking bread, for example, surplus unconsumed bread is made into delicious puddings for the kids. Unconsumed left-over bread is placed in transparent Eco-drums so that the children leaving the canteen can see the amount of bread that has been wasted and which is then donated to a nearby farm to feed chickens.

The Too Good To Go "my anti-waste school” initiative takes this approach even further. Firstly, because it involves all stakeholders: students, educators, teachers, school principals, cooks, and family members, etc. It is by getting everybody to act together that waste can be limited. Secondly, because kitchen teams will be able to better understand the feedback they get from their young guests on what is actually consumed in the canteen. Knowing what children like makes it possible to offer meals that are popular: the better the meal, the less food wasted! The catering committees that validate the menus take into account the feedback of the children while ensuring the food balance of the meals.

Elior is also working with Too Good To Go to limit food waste in hospital, higher-education and B&I canteens.