Cafeterias Unknown: Talking Trash with the Leland & Gray Environmental Action Force

What’s one of the best ways to ensure Farm to School becomes an integral part of school culture? Welcome students as partners and leaders in the movement. It’s always a goal when introducing Farm to School and is a big focus of our upcoming Farm to School Conference. The keynote address and one of the workshops are all about engaging students. 

Because of all this, I quickly accepted the offer from the Leland & Gray Environmental Action Force (LEAF) to join them for lunch the Friday before winter break. I was excited to hear what they’ve been working on and to share some ideas for tackling food waste in their school. 

Before meeting with advisors, Mary and Chris, and the students, I swung by the cafeteria to grab lunch and chat with Food Service Director Chris Parker. I was recently a judge for the local Junior Iron Chef competition and we caught up on the regional teams that will be headed to the statewide competition next month. The recently renovated cafeteria was bustling with students getting made-to-order sandwiches, making their own salads, and the main entree for the day.

With my plate loaded up with a BBQ Chicken Sandwich, corn salad, and more veggies from the salad bar, I headed back up to Mary’s classroom for the LEAF meeting. By the time I got there, they were already deep in discussion but were happy to backtrack for me. 

So, what’s LEAF been up to at Leland & Gray? They’ve been deeply involved in climate change activism in their community and statewide. Students traveled to Brattleboro and Burlington for panel discussions and protests. Regularly, you’ll find students outside with signs during lunch, raising awareness of climate change issues locally and keeping it on people’s minds. The group also manages the school’s compost system and has been supporting sustainable school practices such as buying reusable utensils for the cafeteria. 

The group was also receptive to the idea of digger deeper into food waste reduction. A lot of the strategies proposed in Food Connects’ recent grant focused on working with Food Service Directors, but engaging with student groups is arguably the best way to shift school culture. LEAF is going to start with a food waste audit to measure how much food waste is leaving the cafeteria and then evaluate what the best next step is. 

We also talked about the upcoming Farm to School Conference and the group was excited to join. Mary, Chris, and a group of LEAF members decided to sign up. Having an engaged student presence at the conference and in the workshops will benefit everyone in the room! Students are often a stakeholder group that is absent in Farm to School conversations but can add depth to school partnerships when they’re involved. 

We had covered a lot of ground in a small amount of time. Abruptly, the bell rang and ended our conversation. I looked down at my plate, I had taken one bite of my sandwich! Luckily, I didn’t have a class to get to and Mary let me finish lunch in her classroom. The impossibility of a 25-minute school lunch becomes clear when you have experienced it for yourself. 

Leave class, get to the cafeteria, chat with a friend, wait in line, get your food, find a table, socialize and eat your lunch (without cramming!) all in 25-minutes—good luck! 

But, that’s a topic for another time.

Addressing Food Waste in our Schools

Food Connects begins a two-year project aimed at reducing food waste and increasing food access in local schools.

Food Connects has worked with schools for over 10 years to support Farm to School programs that bring together the cafeteria, classroom, and community. Oftentimes, when working with Food Service Directors, we focus on the procurement and preparation of local food in school cafeterias. Until now, less attention was given to food waste and food recovery, despite it being an essential part of Vermont’s food system. Thanks to the support of a two-year $55,550 grant from the Claneil Foundation, we now have the capacity to greatly build upon our current efforts to address food waste and better support our partners.

As a community, our awareness of the urgency and magnitude of climate change has grown. Farm to School programming is already linked to sustainability education in the classroom and carbon reduction in the cafeteria through local food procurement. We want to strengthen our commitment to these efforts and our work in cafeterias is the prime location for this increased focus. Reducing food waste and increasing food access are two sides of the same problem—this project supports the work we’ve done around trauma-informed approaches to Farm to School. All of which led us to the Claneil Foundation, whose Critical Issue Fund is currently focused on food waste.

Share Cooler at Academy School.

We’re excited to work with Food Service Directors to tap into the captive audience each cafeteria presents. Some schools we work with have already taken big steps to reduce food waste, notably Seed2Tray—Windham Central Supervisory Union’s nutrition program—and the Windham Southeast School District. At Seed2Tray, Chris Parker and his staff repackage leftover food to give students the option of taking an additional meal home with them. In the WSESD, share coolers are a common sight in cafeterias and Putney Central School replaced milk cartons with reusable cups and a milk dispenser.

Despite the promising progress, we anticipate obstacles along the way. The biggest of which is that change is often slow to happen and difficult to enact. This is especially true in middle and high schools. With fewer daily routines and more student autonomy, it becomes crucial to reach students with positive messaging and clear steps they can take to be a part of the solution. We anticipate student environmental groups in secondary schools to be our partners in implementing some of these changes. Research indicates that the longest-lasting interventions are those focused on teachers and staff in the school (as opposed to students). As the main implementers of new systems and the setters of culture in schools, co-opting school staff will be essential. We’ll need to ensure that our best practices are streamlined and easy for busy staff to incorporate into their daily routines.

With these potential challenges in mind, over the next year, we will work closely with schools to refine their current practices and pilot new ones. By the end of this stage of the project, we will engage with at least ten schools in southeast Vermont and the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. The list of potential interventions includes share coolers, repackaging meals, composting systems, school-based food shelves, improving cafeteria environments, and continuing to improve meal quality. We’re also excited to discover new interventions along the way!

In the second phase of the project, we’ll refine this list and highlight the three best practices which have the largest impact relative to their ease of implementation. We will collaborate with state agencies to make sure the practices are aligned with relevant regulations and interview staff from pilot schools to better understand their perspectives. Finally, we’ll take all this information and create a toolkit and workshop to be shared with stakeholders throughout New England.

What I’m most excited about regarding this new project is how it connects strongly with the work we already do in schools and approaches that work through a new lens. I’m sure that in addition to new food waste reduction strategies, new interventions and practices will be uncovered that support other aspects of Farm to School programming. Collaboration is an integral part of this project. I’m looking forward to deepening the relationships we already have with our partners and beginning work with new stakeholders as well.

By Conor Floyd, Food Connects Farm to School Program Manager

We would like to work with you!

• Are you a teacher, administrator, school nutrition staff, or parent in southeast Vermont or the Monadnock Region and would like to see your school take up this work with Food Connects?

• Does your school have innovative practices in food waste reduction and increasing food access?

Email our Farm to School team today to be part of our work: farmtoschool@foodconnects.org.