An Open Letter to School Administrators
Dear School Administrator,
Thanks for taking the time to consider K-12 Food Rescue in your school district. As the Executive Director, I wanted to forward you some information about school food recovery as you consider allowing students to end the practice of "landfill feeding" with unopened and unpeeled food from their trays, a practice that leads to 1 billion food items being fed to landfills annually from American schools.
1) The Richard Russell National School Lunch Act was amended to encourage school food recovery in November of 2011. With that amendment, the protections provided by the 1996 Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act have been clarified to include K-12 Schools.
2) The Indiana State Department of Education and Indiana State Department of Health in collaboration with Food Rescue now encourages school food recovery, and have in fact written guidelines seen here.
3) The USDA and EPA support and encourage school food recovery.
4) Indiana school cafeterias waste an average of 60 unopened and unpeeled food items per day. See Stats Here.
5) Dairy products are pasteurized, and this Harvard study emphasizes the safety of donating these products and unopened and unpeeled food items..
6) Rotting food in landfills produces methane gas that is 21 times more harmful to the environment than C02. K-12 Food Rescue is a food waste diversion program as promoted to students. While the donation piece is the obvious avenue used to keep the food out of the landfill. Kids are not encouraged to donate food, rather be good stewards of the environment by not feeding landfills. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of methane in the world.
7) 40% of food produced in the U.S. is wasted, including 1 billion food items annually from U.S. schools, while 50 million Americans are food insecure. If no families were food insecure, the careless destruction of nutritious food in our schools would be unwise for environmental reasons. However, with 50 million food insecure Americans, perhaps there is an even darker adjective than "unwise" to describe this careless practice.
8) The USDA Secretary announced in September of 2015 nationwide food waste reduction goals aiming to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030. In order to meet this goal, our schools must play a vital if not leading role in a national action plan.
9) Schools teach children that food has nutritional value, and K-12 Food Rescue practices augment that message, rather than erode it. Why would we ever want to send a message to students that food is trash?
10) Schools want to teach children to be thankful, yet the thankless process of harming the environment, and ignoring children and families in need is facilitated if not "taught" by allowing students to fill landfills with unopened and unpeeled food items.
In Indiana, we are ending the practice of landfill feeding one school cafeteria at a time. We can end it in every state, and preserve over 1 billion unopened and unpeeled food items annually. K-12 Rescue programs currently keep 3 million food items out of landfills each year in Indiana, and divert them into the hands of agencies that serve children and families in need through caring agencies that faithfully pick up from schools on a regular basis. We look forward to partnering with you in the future.
John Williamson
Food Rescue President
Inspiring Student Leaders
[email protected]
Tel: 317-694-4006
Thanks for taking the time to consider K-12 Food Rescue in your school district. As the Executive Director, I wanted to forward you some information about school food recovery as you consider allowing students to end the practice of "landfill feeding" with unopened and unpeeled food from their trays, a practice that leads to 1 billion food items being fed to landfills annually from American schools.
1) The Richard Russell National School Lunch Act was amended to encourage school food recovery in November of 2011. With that amendment, the protections provided by the 1996 Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act have been clarified to include K-12 Schools.
2) The Indiana State Department of Education and Indiana State Department of Health in collaboration with Food Rescue now encourages school food recovery, and have in fact written guidelines seen here.
3) The USDA and EPA support and encourage school food recovery.
4) Indiana school cafeterias waste an average of 60 unopened and unpeeled food items per day. See Stats Here.
5) Dairy products are pasteurized, and this Harvard study emphasizes the safety of donating these products and unopened and unpeeled food items..
6) Rotting food in landfills produces methane gas that is 21 times more harmful to the environment than C02. K-12 Food Rescue is a food waste diversion program as promoted to students. While the donation piece is the obvious avenue used to keep the food out of the landfill. Kids are not encouraged to donate food, rather be good stewards of the environment by not feeding landfills. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest producer of methane in the world.
7) 40% of food produced in the U.S. is wasted, including 1 billion food items annually from U.S. schools, while 50 million Americans are food insecure. If no families were food insecure, the careless destruction of nutritious food in our schools would be unwise for environmental reasons. However, with 50 million food insecure Americans, perhaps there is an even darker adjective than "unwise" to describe this careless practice.
8) The USDA Secretary announced in September of 2015 nationwide food waste reduction goals aiming to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030. In order to meet this goal, our schools must play a vital if not leading role in a national action plan.
9) Schools teach children that food has nutritional value, and K-12 Food Rescue practices augment that message, rather than erode it. Why would we ever want to send a message to students that food is trash?
10) Schools want to teach children to be thankful, yet the thankless process of harming the environment, and ignoring children and families in need is facilitated if not "taught" by allowing students to fill landfills with unopened and unpeeled food items.
In Indiana, we are ending the practice of landfill feeding one school cafeteria at a time. We can end it in every state, and preserve over 1 billion unopened and unpeeled food items annually. K-12 Rescue programs currently keep 3 million food items out of landfills each year in Indiana, and divert them into the hands of agencies that serve children and families in need through caring agencies that faithfully pick up from schools on a regular basis. We look forward to partnering with you in the future.
John Williamson
Food Rescue President
Inspiring Student Leaders
[email protected]
Tel: 317-694-4006
