Food waste audits: Key first step to reducing food loss at schools
Sustainability Works – September 03, 2025
School cafeterias are a leading source of food waste.
Let’s work together to keep your school’s
Lunch Out Of Landfills.
School cafeterias are a leading source of food waste.
Let’s work together to keep your school’s
Lunch Out Of Landfills.
Food recovery in schools is a powerful strategy that reduces environmental impact and supports community well-being. By diverting surplus food from landfills, schools help cut waste and promote sustainability.
At the same time, recovered food can be redirected to students and families facing food insecurity, turning potential waste into a valuable resource that nourishes and uplifts vulnerable communities.
Through the use of shared tables and refrigerators, donation programs and awareness of the issue, food from lunch cafeterias can be recovered for future use and avoid ending up in landfills.
LEARN MORE
Make an observation of your school cafeteria and note what you see. How much waste is occurring? What resources are already available?
They may be reluctant if it means more work for them. Assure them that you’ll work with them and the students to run a program and monitor food waste.
Organize a waste sort or food waste audit to understand the bigger landscape of waste occurring in your school’s cafeteria.
Take the pledge and we’ll support the students to help them do all the work: from process to funding. From submitting a quote to HD Supply for the cost of a share refrigerator to connecting them with a local Rotary Club or Edward Jones consultant.
Pounds of food recovered
Lunch Out Of Landfills Schools
Students Reached
Joe Richardson, MEE Founder and School Composting Facilitator, worked with Urbana High School in 2018 to implement a pilot program for waste sorting and composting. During Fall 2019, Lunch out of Landfills was rolled out in 13 Frederick County schools where up to 80% of lunch waste was consistently diverted from landfills during the 2019-2020 school year.
Mountainside Education and Enrichment (MEE) was founded in 2008 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit to broaden environmental and scientific educational programs, provide community engagement opportunities, and attract grant funding and donations for sponsoring low-income youth in MEE educational activities and Bar-T Summer Camps, including Lunch Out Of Landfills.
Lunch Out of Landfill’s (LOOL) mission is to enable students K-12 to become solution-focused change-makers to address our planet’s climate emergency through food waste prevention. Our student-driven initiative incorporates a systemic change by introducing composting, effective recycling, and food recovery. Change starts here but continues for generations.
