Cooking up better solutions and driving change: EATRITE takes on food waste
By Chloe Ho and Nathanael Hon
Rice, beef, pasta, poultry, pork, legumes, and a myriad of other foods are wasted within RCHK on a daily basis.
Thankfully, science teacher Vidya Madhavan and the EATRITE Year 9 REAL class have been fighting this trend.
They have engaged in various activities advocating towards reducing food waste in a sustainable manner. The students designed and put up posters relating to the issue of food waste, received permission to install a bio-digester, and worked with Feeding HK to contribute towards a food drive.
Hours of dedication have been put towards the proposal of a bio-digester installation, which would allow the school to utilise food waste from the canteen by breaking down the waste into liquids that could be used as environmentally friendly fertilisers for the school’s gardens.
EATRITE member Charmaine Lie described the process: “We had to make sure we had the right research and access to the right companies that we could choose from and then propose our plan to Dr Brown and Mr Wheeler [...] We had guest speakers come in that we then did further research on to include in our plan for our biodigester proposal.“
In addition, another major achievement of the EATRITE class was organising a food drive in collaboration with Feeding HK.
“We set up food collection boxes at school for donations, which we then donated to Feeding HK for a food drive. The food collection box was for the entire school including primary, and we received canned foods, rice bags, noodle packets, and more. We also helped pack the food for the food drive,” explained Charis Tai.
Feeding HK is a local organisation that receives donations of food from retailers, schools, and more, and redistributes it back to the people in need of Hong Kong. They conduct numerous programs such as the Bread Runner program, which accepts volunteers to visit different bakeries after closing hours and request leftover quantities of food that would have been thrown away, but instead will be given to those in need within the following day.
Most recently, during the REAL Deep Dive days, the EATRITE class baked a variety of food items such as cupcakes and cookies, in a sustainable way that does not waste food, by conducting cooking procedures that prevented the waste of ingredients.
“I think that the REAL days and being able to bake food without wasting ingredients has taught us further on how we can practice reducing food waste whilst still producing good food, and we can take this understanding back home,” Michael Vong reflected.
Other than the aforementioned activities, the EATRITE class has also published several articles in The RCHK Truth on our effect on food waste as individuals and as a school, and ways that we can sustainably reduce these impacts.
All in all, the EATRITE class has had an extremely productive year, accomplishing many achievements despite the limitations caused by distance learning.
The issue of food waste within RCHK is distinct, and the advocacy that the EATRITE class has expressed against it has been successful, but with this considered, only time may tell what the future of food waste at RCHK will be.