Food waste is a huge environmental problem. There is no other place to throw food waste away. Also, the dumping of food waste in oceans has been mentioned here in another post. Today I would introduce the campaign our school initiated in order to reduce the amount of food waste thrown.

First, I must begin with how we started the campaign. 2 years ago, the Student Council made a new student department which was the Department of Environmental Protection. I joined this department when it was being established, hoping to mitigate the environmental impacts of the school. However, because the department was in its beginning stage, no specific actions were taken to improve environmental conditions around our school. A year later, a new school president and a new leader for the Department of Environmental Protection was chosen. One of the promises made by the new school president was that he would reduce the amount of food waste and use the money spent in disposing these wastes for other meaningful purposes. The Department of Environmental Protection was in charge of this campaign, and I and other members came up with creative methods to induce students to reduce the food they throw away.

In order to provide an incentive to the students, we decided to use the money saved to buy snacks for the students. We thought this would motivate students to leave less amount of food. At first, the campaign did not work out well. Few students were interested in the campaign. However, as we surveyed for the kind of snack the students wanted and advertised the campaign through the schools' broadcasting system, more students were aware of the amount of food they were leaving. As a consequence, the amount of food waste dropped to a half (80 kg to 40 kg) and we gave out ice creams to students in reward of their effort to reduce food waste.

We are continuously mending the campaign's designs, seeking for better methods. Two months ago, we proposed a plan to reduce food waste to 0 kg. Students were shocked, complaining that this plan was impossible. Because we set such a high goal, we were able to further reduce food waste from 40 kg to 15 kg. Now, we have devised a plan to make this campaign competitive. We divided the school into two groups (middle school and high school) and are going to give reward to the group that left less food waste. Last week, the high school students won and this week, the furious middle school students are committed to winning this race.

How is our school's campaign?

Any suggestions?