Abstract
Background: The amount of food waste from school lunch programmes varies across different countries, ranging from 33 to 116 g/student/day. Ka Ora, Ka Ako is a national school lunch programme in Aotearoa New Zealand which provides free healthy lunches to the schools whose students and families face greater socio-economic difficulties. Although the programme has been criticised with claims that large quantities of food are wasted, there is no available data to support these comments.
Objectives: The aims of the study were to determine the quantities and types of food waste, explore the factors influencing food waste, and the destinations of food waste from the Ka Ora, Ka Ako school lunch programme in Dunedin primary schools.
Methods: A list of schools participating in the Ka Ora, Ka Ako school lunch programme was obtained from the Ministry of Education’s Ka Ora, Ka Ako website. Of the 11 possible primary schools in Dunedin, eight primary schools took part in this study. Each school was visited for four days: the first day was an observation day and on the remaining three consecutive days food waste audits were carried out. A short survey was also undertaken in each school with the staff-in-charge of the lunch programme. Equipment (e.g., measuring scales, buckets and containers) was used for direct weighing and to carry out the waste composition analysis (i.e., manually sorting waste by type). Data was recorded and analysed using Microsoft Excel and Stata/SE 18.0 for Mac (Apple Silicon) software.
Results: Across the eight schools, the roll ranged from 17 to 309 students. Most (n=7) schools used the external lunch provision model, and one used an internal lunch model. The average amount of total food waste from the Ka Ora, Ka Ako lunch programme across the eight schools was 7606 g/day (SD: 6171), with a mean of 52 g/student/day (SD: 22). Overall, 54% of the lunches were eaten, with 18% plate waste, 13% surplus waste (i.e. untouched lunches that go to waste), and 15% surplus non-waste (i.e., untouched lunches that are re-distributed and non-waste). Children at the one internal model school ate more (75%) and has less plate waste (11%) plate waste compared to the external model schools. Hot meals were observed to be more popular and consumed more than cold meals. Children at schools with a higher school Equity Index score (i.e., schools with students facing more socio-economic difficulties) generated less total food waste (g/student/day). Food waste went to seven different destinations, ranging from being returned to suppliers to being fed to stock animals.
Conclusion: This study has found that over half of school lunches are eaten by children, only a third are wasted, with 15% of lunches being redistributed to other people or used to feed stock animals. A key issue identified in this study are surplus lunches. It is recommended that food waste audits be undertaken across schools in New Zealand, ideally across the year, and that food provision is de-centralised by encouraging schools to transition to an internal lunch model.