Advanced Search
September 12, 2022
Welcome to season 4 of The Climate Conversation! We are heading back to school to learn about reducing cafeteria food waste with Food Policy Researcher Melissa Terry and representatives from the Boulder Valley School District and the Chef Ann Foundation in Colorado. Each day, the school district cooks over 15,000 fresh, cooked-from-scratch meals that kids actually want to eat. At the same time, they have also reduced their food waste by installing bulk milk dispensers, a salad bar, a composting system, and more. Dan and Emma speak with Mary Rochelle from the Boulder Valley School District and Laura Smith from the Chef Ann Foundation about how the district overhauled its school meals with the support of the Chef Ann Foundation, which works with school systems around the country.
Show notes:
Briefing: Back to School
Briefing: Reducing Emissions by Reducing Food Waste
Resources on the 2023 Farm Bill
Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, for insight on the latest innovative climate solutions and environmental policy in action.
Follow us on social media @eesionline
About this Podcast:
With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.
Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to season four of The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. We're thrilled to be back because we have a ton of really exciting climate solutions stories to share. Here with me is a familiar voice for returning listeners, Communications Associate Emma Johnson. Hey, Emma, great to be once again hosting the podcast with you.
Emma Johnson: Hi Dan, I'm really happy to be back on the mic with you for what is sure to be another fantastic season of The Climate Conversation. We have remained hard at work behind the scenes over these past couple of months preparing new episodes on ocean climate solutions, energy efficiency, the international climate conference known as COP27, and a whole lot more.
Dan: That's right, we have so much planned for the fall, you won't want to miss any of it. Be sure to keep up with our events and goings on and publications. The best way to do that is to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions at www.eesi.org/subscribe.
Emma: For this first episode, we will be doing what many students teachers and staff are doing in September and that is heading back to school. Right around the time that this podcast is coming out, EESI will also be hosting a briefing on greening schools, where our panelists will discuss topics such as electric school buses, green roofs, and school meals. And it's that last topic that we will be exploring more today, specifically how to reduce food waste in schools.
Dan: Let's start by talking about food waste more generally, which EESI covered in a briefing in December 2021. In 2019, about 35% of all food in the United States went unsold or uneaten. And the vast majority of that ended up in landfills. And that's according to the food waste nonprofit ReFED. The value of that wasted food is estimated at $408 billion, which equates to about 2% of U.S. GDP. That food waste also accounts for about 4% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 14% of all freshwater use an 18% of cropland. Overall, food is the number one product entering landfills today.
Emma: And at the same time, one and eight are about 41 million Americans are considered food insecure, including almost 13 million children. There isn't a problem of quantity of food, but problems distribution, transportation, processing and preferences. And one place where you can really see this play out is in U.S. school cafeterias. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that school served roughly 2.4 5 billion breakfasts and 4.9 billion lunches, and it is estimated that a quarter of the food served ends up in the garbage.
Dan: Reducing food waste in schools would be hugely beneficial in so many ways. For one thing, schools wouldn't need to spend as much money on food or on waste disposal, they would produce less waste that would go into landfills. And that would reduce their carbon footprint. And students would also be eating more nutritious filling meals they actually want to be eating.
Emma: To learn more about food waste in schools, and what schools can be doing about this problem. Let's turn things over to Melissa Terry, who is a food policy researcher and consultant with the University of Arkansas, and also an urban farmer.
Melissa Terry: I worked with the World Wildlife Fund on a research report that was published in 2019, where we were in eight states, and nine cities, and overall 46 schools. And so one of the biggest things that we found was that milk waste was a really big deal, unopened milk cartons, students taking a milk even if they didn't want one. And in fact, we find that students who are in schools with bulk milk dispensers, actually their milk consumption goes up. Because just from a practical kid's point of view, the milk is colder, it's in a clear cup and they can see it. So there are some things that can happen when you observe them, you can perhaps just change the way that the item is presented. And it makes a huge impact. Because when we think about the environmental impact of milk as a product, there's a whole on-farm energy cycle. And then you have the transportation and refrigeration components. And then by the time that milk carton gets to school, and it's sitting in a cooler, for a child to take that thinking that they have to but they don't want it is such a waste of resources.
Melissa: If we're serving students school food on Styrofoam trays with plastic spoons and forks, and everything is disposable, then there's not a lot of dignity in that. And it doesn't dignify the food, it doesn't say to the recipients that you're a valued person here. And we're kind of going back to something that we knew how to do. These students who are coming up through our cafeterias right now are going to be policymakers that are going to be living in a world that is significantly more impacted by climate change than the world that we're in today. And so bringing them up through a system that reinforces the choices that we need to make. So just being able to help schools through USDA equipment grants or state grants to repurchase the equipment that they need. Some schools don't even have the dishwashers anymore to be able to wash trays. So those kinds of supportive policy environments to help schools go back to a real tray with a real silverware and a real cup is something that says to students. This is my space. This is my textbook.
Dan: The issue of food waste is also something that's currently being discussed in Congress. Since the beginning of the year, Congress has been holding hearings on the upcoming 2023 Farm Bill. That's a huge package of legislation that Congress updates roughly every five years. The Farm Bill covers a wide range of issues, including conservation, rural development, and nutrition. School meals are part of it too. For example, USDA runs a National School Lunch Program and a School Breakfast Program that provide nutritious low-cost meals to students.
Emma: The 2023 Farm Bill is a big focus of our work at EESI right now, and our resources on it are available for anyone to use. The link to those is in the show notes for this episode on our website.
Dan: Let's hear from Melissa again about other ways that initiatives and education on food waste in schools could be elevated in the 2023 Farm Bill and other federal agency programs.
Melissa: The Farm Bill is a big deal. And it's a real reminder that school food is anchored in agricultural practices and access to our farm community. It's also a billion-dollar industry. And so coming from a farming background myself, one of the best gifts we can give to small- and mid-sized farmers is access to long-term contracts with food providers, particularly school food providers. One of the most exciting things happening in the school food space right now from a policy perspective, is the upcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. This is going to be it's been about 50 years since the first and only previous White House conference on food, nutrition, and health was held in 1969. And that event was pivotal in influencing our food policy agenda on so many levels. And so now here half a century later, the White House conference is an opportunity to catalyze public and private sectors around coordinated strategies. We'll have members of Congress from across the political spectrum, coming together to talk about some potential remedies and potential long-term strategies, whether it's school gardens or farm-to-school, or the National School Lunch Program itself, like this is a really genuine bipartisan policy space. And so it's been my observation that I have seen lots of diversity in who comes to the table to with ideas and with support. So I think that that's going to be a really important opportunity to further open up that policy window that we were talking about earlier.
Emma: Now it's time to learn more about how school systems are tackling food waste. To do that we will be heading to the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado. The school district encompasses 56 schools that educate more than 31,000 students and serve 17,000 healthy, cooked-from-scratch meals every day. Near the school district office is the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting home ingredients scratch cooking in schools. It was founded by Chef Ann Cooper in 2009, who was also the Director of Food Services for the Boulder Valley School District for 11 years. The Chef Ann Foundation works nationally to support school food programs including partnering with Boulder Valley School Food Project to increase awareness and education around school meals and share insights with other school districts.
Dan: And joining us on the podcast today are Laura Smith, Program Director of Workforce Development at Chef Ann Foundation and Mary Rochelle, who oversees food service grants and communication programs for Boulder Valley School District, or BVSD. And they'll talk about their approach to managing food waste across the school systems. Laura and Mary, welcome to the show.
Laura Smith: Thanks for having us.
Mary Rochelle: We're happy to be here. Thanks for having us.
Emma: I wanted to start off with a couple of background questions to set the scene for our listeners. How does the Boulder Valley School District approach serving so many meals a day? And can you talk more about the relationship between the school district and the Chef Ann Foundation?
Mary: Sure. So, in our school district, we have about 30,000 students, which means that every day we're cooking about 15,000 meals for those kids. Our approach is to do it in a scratch cooked way so that we can control what ingredients go into those meals. Our overarching goal is to support those students as best as possible in the school day. And we think that a healthy meal is a really important part of that and a really important tool for learning. So when we think about how we make our meals, Chef Ann Cooper has a lot to do with what our program looks like now. So she came in, and she really rehauled our program to look completely different from what a lot of people think of as school food. So I know when I was growing up, I always had a Styrofoam tray with like a cardboard rectangle of pizza that had been reheated from frozen, or chicken nuggets and canned peaches, maybe if I was lucky, Chef Ann Cooper came in to Boulder Valley School District, and she really rehauled it. And she said, We don't want to open up a giant can of nacho cheese sauce, that's fluorescent orange and filled with chemicals. We're going to make our cheese sauce from scratch. And so, you know, that took a lot of work, a lot of planning, and all happen before I got here. So I can't take any of the credit. But I'm very happy to be at a district where we can proudly serve really nourishing healthy meals to our students. Not only do we want them to be healthy, but we also want the kids to actually eat them. So part of my job is doing taste tests and marketing, helping to make sure that new entrees that we introduce are actually things that kids will like, that's really important to us as well. So, you know, we talk about doing healthy meals, but we have nachos, and pizza and hot dogs on our menu. The hot dogs are antibiotic- and nitrate-free. You know, our nachos, we use beans that are grown in Boulder County, locally sourced, and our cheese sauce is made from scratch with about five ingredients. So they're healthful versions of kid favorites. And that's why kids like to eat it, kids come back for more. We also have salad bars in all of our schools. And so that allows us to do a lot of local procurement with farmers in the area. So we have what's most in season, what's tastiest on the salad bar, and kids can pick and choose what they like.
Laura: Yeah, so as you mentioned, the Chef Ann Foundation is a national nonprofit. And we're focused on helping school districts transition from highly processed heat and serve food. Maybe they're contracting with an external company to creating a self-operated scratch cooking program for their school district food programs. So oftentimes, we're providing school communities with the tools, training, resources, and even funding that enables them to create this healthier food program, really redefining lunchroom environments. So we've worked with more than 13,000 schools, 3.3 million kiddos to date. And our relationship with BVSD obviously had to do with Chef Ann Cooper, after she started in BVSD, she had gained some experience across the country helping school food programs transition including her own. And so she started the foundation to really bring those lessons and bring those resources nationally. And these days, BVSD is a prime example of what the Chef Ann Foundation is all about. So we often collaborate with BVSD and use BVSD as a case study for best practices in the field.
Dan: Well, Emma, I think we need to get ourselves invited over to lunch at BVSD. Because homemade cheese sauce and nitrate-free hotdogs, those are very much up my alley. But sometimes there's food left on the tray right, not everything gets consumed. And so I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the specific challenges in BVSD with respect to food waste, and what kind of impact, monetary or otherwise, does food waste have on schools in your district?
Mary: Absolutely. And there's some, you know, national factors in place with school food that leads to a lot of food waste in general. So, school meal programs are typically funded through the USDA National School Lunch Program. And they have certain requirements, which make a lot of sense, that you have to serve a certain, you know, specific components to students. So you have to serve a protein, a whole grain, a fruit, a vegetable and you have to offer dairy. So those five different components have to be given to every single student. Those are the requirements if you want to be able to get the funding from the USDA for the meal program. So inherently built into the program, there's a lot of opportunity for food waste to occur. What our program has tried to do is tried to think about those parameters creatively and there are some creative solutions that like we've implemented that other school districts can do as well, such as having salad bars. So at some schools, if they don't have salad bars, they're required to put the canned green beans on the plate no matter what, because they have to serve kids vegetables. In our district, students have the option to go through the salad bar and pick the items that look the best to them that they think they'll actually eat. So that helps make sure that it's items that students most likely will actually eat, and reducing food waste, because we're not just putting it on their tray automatically. One other thing that was introduced when Chef Ann Cooper was our director is having bulk milk dispensers. So you know, in traditional cafeterias, you see those cartons of milk that are hard to open. And a lot of times kids would only take a sip of it, and then throw it away. So you're wasting not only the milk inside of it, but the container as well. So we eliminated those in our cafeterias and have those big bulk dispensers similar to what you'd might see in like a college dining hall. And what's great about that program, is that the USDA allows us to offer dairy, we're not required to actually serve it. And so that meets the requirement to offer it to students, as long as it's in the cafeteria with reusable glasses available. Any student who purchased or qualified for a school meal could take advantage of that milk. So there are some creative workarounds, given that we're working in the parameters of like having to give every student specific food items.
Laura: And I would also add that while schools certainly present some challenges with regards to food waste, we would be remiss not to mention the opportunities as it relates to obviously food waste reduction, but also food loss reduction. And I actually happened to work at BVSD a handful of years ago, and I can recall in 2018, I think it was, we were working with a farmer partner. After a hailstorm, they had grown this beautiful field of peppers that were all severely damaged, so that they weren't going to be able to bring them to market. But Boulder Valley School District was able to purchase those peppers and chop them up to serve them on the salad bar. And so we were able to be a really integral part of that local food system, ensuring that all of that food didn't get lost from the field. And then as Mary mentioned, salad bars offer real opportunity to reduce waste. So we are hitting both the front and the back end of that process.
Emma: I think something that schools have to deal with is that they have to figure out okay, what is being wasted first, you know, before they go about making changes, they need to figure out what kids are throwing away. And so something that I know that you all had participated in was a food waste audit that was organized by the World Wildlife Fund. They have a Food Waste Warriors program that involves schools from around the country to conduct food waste audits. So I'm wondering if you all can think back to when you had done this audit, or if you've done previous food waste audits, if there's some big takeaways from that experience, and if there's any other event or program similar to that that prompted widespread changes in food waste management across the district.
Laura: Boulder Valley School District has a comprehensive sustainability plan that's focusing on all areas of the school district facilities, transportation, everything, and food services certainly is a part of that and has been from the jump. But a number of years ago, we really decided that needed to become a focus of the department that we needed to train our staff a little bit more, we needed to think about our back of house operations as well as the front of house and interactions with kiddos and the custodial staff in the cafeterias. So we began measuring our waste in kitchens. And then we actually transitioned that same sort of measurement mechanism into school cafeterias because you can't manage what you don't measure. So we really started with kind of getting our arms around this scenario at hand. And at the same time, we had some kiddos who had adopted school food waste environmental sustainability in general, as part of their pet projects in the classroom. So those kiddos developed some posters that we hung in our cafeterias, they actually came to our all staff training in August, and spoke to our staff of 200 to really share what it meant to them that their food service teams were going to care about food waste, they were also connecting those opportunities to learning. And that World Wildlife Fund opportunity with the Food Waste Warriors Program was phenomenal in the sense that we had direct engagement with multiple grade levels. And we were able to connect it to their curriculum standards. And the teachers really did a phenomenal job of extending learning into the cafeteria and back again, because kids don't stop learning when they go to lunch. They're still sponges wherever they are in the school building. And so that was really impactful at the time. And I'll let Mary take it from here about where it's gone from there.
Mary: So we in recent years have introduced an AmeriCorps member who one of their primary focuses is food waste. So their big umbrella goal is to do more environmental education with students in the cafeteria and connected to food systems and a big part of what they focus on is food waste prevention and awareness with students about you know how it impacts the environment. In addition to the AmeriCorps member that we have who works full time with us to do this type of programming with students, we have these Lean Path machines, which Laura helped get started before she left, she got some grant funding. And so the Lean Path machines are something that we first saw in Google's kitchen, their offices where they have been used, as well as other like university -level cafeterias. And so they're a way to measure the amount of food waste either in the back of house or in the cafeteria, front of house. And so Laura helped procure some grant funding, we've been able to get a little bit more since then to put these Lean Path machines in some of our schools so that students can in real time see how much food is being wasted in their cafeteria. We also have some of those Lean Path machines in our central kitchen so that as we're producing our food, we're also trying to track and measure what's been wasted. And we're able to break it down by item. So we can say, Oh, we're preparing broccoli for our cheesy broccoli potato dish, which is delicious, by the way, and we can see that we wasted like 400 pounds of broccoli scraps, is there any way that we could reduce that number. So the idea here is that we can manage what we're measuring, as Laura has said, and ultimately tried to reduce the amount of food being wasted or creatively repurpose it in some way.
Emma: You all have talked about many different ways that you all are tackling food waste across school district and getting lots of different folks involved. Curious if you can talk a little bit more about specifically how you're getting students involved in these efforts?
Mary: Yeah, so our taste test program is really important when we're developing new menu items, because we don't feel good and we don't like having to throw away food at the end of the lunch period. And actually, we compost it, we're really fortunate that the majority of our schools, we do compost our food. But we still would much rather have that food be fed to a student. So that's why when we are looking to put new menu items on our menu, we do taste testing at multiple schools to see if it's something that kids actually like and that they actually want to eat. So this spring, we were taste testing a new chicken recipe, and we were doing chicken drumsticks with a new sauce. And I had one student who came back for seconds and then thirds and he ultimately came back for like seven or eight drumsticks. I think that was definitely like a good sign like, Okay, kids like this recipe, we'll put it on the menu. So that's really important in the menu planning process to think about that. After stuff gets on the menu, we continually try to put a lot of energy into marketing our programs. So we have these beautiful menu calendars that get printed every year, they have student artwork that show our Harvest of the Month, so items that we can purchase locally from farmers. And it's just a really colorful, beautiful way to display our menu. So we think it's really important to make our meals and our cafeterias fun places for students.
Laura: It's also really important to include the entire community. I mean, you have the community within the school building, you have the community of the school district, but you also have all of your community partners. And I can remember going out for these taste tests. And if we brought a farmer partner along who had maybe grown the purple potatoes that kids had never seen made into purple mashed potatoes before, their eyes would light up like these celebrities were amongst them, eating lunch with them, serving them the food that they had grown. And just helping kids on the food literacy side understand the connection between growing food and eating food and everything that's invested into that, and the people behind that, is really powerful. And I think that's one thing that BVSD does really well and plenty of school districts across the country have really strong Farm to School programs. But that also has a really large impact on food waste. Once you can help kiddos understand that they only need to take what they're going to eat. And at least in BVSD, the salad bar is opened the entire lunch period and they can come back if they need more. Just little tweaks to programs like that can have a significant impact on waste and the way kids approach it and the way that food is viewed.
Dan: We've already talked a little bit about like, for example, the milk dispenser. Department of Agriculture says dairy has to be available and an alternative to putting a little square carton on everyone's tray is to make the dispenser available and the kiddos can take it if they want. What are some other ways federal funding influences how you put a school lunch program together? Are there things that you wish you could do that maybe you can't or are there ideas that you've sort of had internally about how you might use resources differently or, you know, sort of maybe future evolutions of the programs that USDA runs?
Mary: I would love to see additional funding provided to school meal programs in general because I think there are a lot of school food programs who want to do better for their students in providing healthier options, more sustainable options, but they're scared because it's such a tight reimbursement amount that they feel very limited and they feel very locked into what they've always done, which is a lot of times like reheating chicken nuggets and so are getting canned fruits and vegetables. So I think if the federal government were able to provide additional funding to schools for meals, I think that a lot of the schools would be more willing and open to changing their programs to be doing more of what like we're doing in Boulder Valley. Every year, the reimbursement amount changes a little bit, but we get, you know, schools get about $4 per school meal. After you factor in overhead, like staff and building and machines and equipment, you're left with about $1.25 to pay for the actual food that goes on the plate for every student. So that's just super limiting. And I think that generally increasing funding for those meals could go a really long way. Getting a little bit more specific, though, you know, there's not any specific funding right now to support food waste prevention in schools. So it'd be really neat to see some programs that might look to address that head on. Like Laura said, there is a lot of funding right now for Farm to School programs from the USDA. And there's really cool things happening across the country, that it would be very cool to see more recognition of the value of programming around food waste prevention. There are some groups right now who are advocating for there to be more food literacy in schools. And so in the same way that there's like an art or a gym teacher, there should be someone there who's teaching food literacy and helping kids to learn not just how to grow their own food, but how to cook their own food and learn about how, you know, it impacts their body and their ability to thrive and also learn about food systems, and where does our food come from. And like, tomatoes don't just come from the from the grocery store, helping them to make the connections to where food comes from and how we're connected to it. So I think that there are some initiatives trying to get more federal funding for programs like that in schools, which I think goes a long ways.
Emma: And I know you both have touched on this in a number of different ways. But I'm curious beyond food waste initiatives that you all have put into place, are there other ways that you are trying to make your school meals more environmentally friendly, or other programs that you will have put in place, or are thinking about putting in place that touches on some of these other aspects of school meals and making them more sustainable in general?
Mary: Yeah, so we offer a vegetarian option every day, which is really important for a lot of our students who want those plant-based options. And we've offered a vegetarian option for a long time, and students continue to kind of push us in a direction of having more sustainable options. And a lot of them that means reducing the amount of beef that we have on our menu are some specific requests we get. And you know, in our middle and high schools, we have third options. And so the third option is a place where we can kind of experiment with new menu items. So just on that same thread, we also do these junior Iron Chef competitions where students can create items and the winning entree gets put on our menu for the next year. And so the last couple of years, a lot based on parent and student demand and concern around sustainability, we've made the Iron Chef competition theme plant-based options. So if students want to enter this competition and have their winning recipe on our menu, they need to do something that's plant-based. So we have a great student team of middle schoolers who created this delicious tofu jambalaya recipe that I think kids are really going to like. And that's going to be on our menu next year too. So getting students involved in actually creating some of the recipes is helpful.
Laura: And I would just say that if anybody listening from a school or school district who wants to get involved in a food waste initiative, or a sustainability initiative, could hear BVSD and be like, Oh my gosh, that's way too much to take on. But luckily, that's where the Chef Ann Foundation comes in. And we have a slew of resources, we have a website called The Lunchbox that has all sorts of tools, resources, examples, case studies for school districts to learn from. In addition to that we have multiple grant programs. So we have the salad bars to schools grant program, so a district or school can apply to receive a salad bar for free and that comes along with some technical assistance and training. We're really excited to launch here shortly a bulk milk program similar to the salad bar program where we will be able to grant bulk milk machines. So that will be coming here towards the end of the year. We have a professional development series called the School Food Institute where individuals in school food can enroll in these courses and learn about any topics in school food, but we have ones devoted to plant forward initiatives, sustainable lunch rooms, and so those are really great opportunities to learn a little bit more. And then some of our bigger programs are around technical assistance and consulting. We have a three-year grant program to help school districts move from a heat and serve operation into a self-operated scratch cook program. And then we also have a new workforce development pathway where we are helping school food professionals at from entry level through to leadership to really gain the knowledge and skills to successfully operate a scratch cooking program. So the Chef Ann Foundation is here for all the questions and opportunities and it really can be taken in bite sized pieces, pun intended, there's no need to start in and think that you have to be BVSD tomorrow. Doing one thing to help in the sustainability world and to help with food waste is really impactful.
Dan: That's so great. Speaking of bite sized pieces, I'm going to ask you for some morsels of advice, lessons learned that you've learned along the way about making school lunches more delicious, making them more helpful. reducing food waste along the way, Laura, and Mary, what are some lessons learned that you'd like to share for people who might be listening who maybe haven't thought about this issue before, but might want to start thinking about how to put action into effect at their own local level?
Laura: Yeah, so in addition to any number of the opportunities that Mary has shared, as an example, some higher-level opportunities that do have significant effects on food waste, are to schedule recess before lunch. It probably comes as no surprise that a kid who has been running around is going to be a little bit hungrier. And studies have actually shown that kids consume more milk, fruit, vegetables, when recess happens before lunch. Also giving kiddos enough time to eat. Sometimes we hear about schools where they have 15 minutes in the cafeteria. And if you have a seven-year-old, you know that's probably not going to cut it most days. So just making sure that the kids have time to eat. And that also helps them kind of mindfully approach their meals. But I think above all, and Mary, please add on to this, is getting students involved. Students are the everything. They're the reason that school food operators do what they do. People in school food love the kiddos. And when there's opportunities for them to work together and learn from each other. It's for the benefit of everybody. Food waste is just one opportunity for that. But especially in today's world, where kids are learning about environmental sustainability, and climate change, and all of that food waste as a prime opportunity to engage students in cafeterias and kitchens.
Mary: I think you covered it, I think I would just say too, one of the benefits of having students involved is they're really good at thinking outside of the box. And a lot of times, they'll come up with ideas that we would have totally missed, because we're boring adults who've been working within our silos for so long. And kids really are such creative thinkers. So getting them involved is not only the right thing to do, and the best way to get them engaged, but it's also really helpful.
Dan: Well, thank you, Mary, for that. And thank you, Laura. And it's so nice of you to come on our podcast today and tell us all about your work at BVSD and the Chef Ann Foundation. It's very interesting. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
Laura and Mary: Thanks for having us. It's been nice.
Dan: Well, that was a really great episode, Emma, such an interesting topic. And something that I think we most of us can relate to. Most of us have gone to public school or private school with school lunch programs, we know what it's like to have lunch, we don't want to eat when we're a little kid, we probably feel a little bit guilty throwing food away, especially knowing that so many people are food insecure. This is a great topic. And it's one that I'm really, really excited to keep working on. I say keep working on because again, we did a briefing on this in December 2021. It was really, really great. You've heard this mentioned a few times there's an organization called ReFED. And at that December briefing, we featured Dana Gunders, who's the executive director. We also heard from Emily Broad Leib. She's the director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. And that briefing was introduced by Representative Julia Brownley, who represents California in the House of Representatives. You can find that briefing and all of our briefings all of our other resources by visiting us online at www.eesi.org/briefings or in the show notes for this episode.
Emma: Yeah, Dan, that you mentioned how relatable that to this topic was that we all have these memories about school lunches, and I totally agree. But as Mary and Laura, were talking, I was getting flashbacks to that frozen pizza that I would sometimes have in those milk cartons. And I think sometimes when you have something over and over again, it just seems like the way it has to be done. And then you hear about programs like the Boulder Valley School District, and then you realize, oh, this could be so much better. And it could be so much better for so many students and be such an integral part of their growing up lives and all the time that they spend at school and it could be just an incredibly formative experience for them and an educational one. And so if you want to learn more about EESI 's work related to food waste, you should head to our website at www.eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi weekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe thanks for joining us and see you next time.
Advancing science-based climate solutions
Top-Rated Climate Nonprofit – 4-Star Charity