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Food From Our Gardens Lusine Mehrabyan Nationality - Armenian Cornell University

ABSTRACT: YOUR IDEA

world’s food is thrown away unconsumed, over 1 billion people die from lack of food every year. This is loss of human life, capital, resources, energy, and labor. Where food is wasted, it causes rotting of food, which releases methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. The high amount of food going to landfills has a tremendous impact on accelerating rates of global warming. The carbon and water footprint of food waste take a heavy toll on the environment. In many developing countries, food waste also results in household burning of trash which not only has adverse health effects, such as lung cancer, but environmental as well by polluting the air.

Every year one third of the food produced in the world is wasted, that is about 1.3 billion tons of food. Every year about one billion people die from hunger. Food waste not only highlights this inequity in food distribution, but also causes social, economical, and environmental problems. To address this issue, Food From Our Gardens turns what is to become food waste into gardens. By introducing composting at schools through a curriculum taught by teachers, Food from our Gardens raises awareness of the issue of food waste and proposes a solution in which schoolchildren can take action. Through specially designed bags, schoolchildren bring food waste from home to school where they work together to partake in a weekly composting activity. Once compost is ready, schools turn their backyards into gardens by planting fruits and vegetables. The produce from the gardens is used to provide healthy and nutritional lunches to the schoolchildren. The aim is to not only raise awareness of the issue of food waste and its resulting problems, but also take action through giving schoolchildren the opportunity to take active roles in making positive health and environmental impact in their schools, communities, and the world.

To address the severe issue of food waste, Food From Our Gardens provides an innovative solution that takes into consideration health, social, and environmental impact. The idea of Food From Our Gardens is to introduce composting as an alternative to throwing away food through an incentivized mechanism that results in better nutritional health for children in schools. Composting has many beneficial effects: it increases waste diversion from disposal, increases recycling by taking organic matter from the waste, enhances soil fertility to assist in sustainable agriculture, and has little to no capital and operating cost [4]. Through the introduction of composting in schools, the goal of Food From Our Gardens is to create fruit and vegetable gardens in school backyards to use what was once food waste and produce nutritional food for schoolchildren. In low-income countries where oftentimes food is scarce, schools will serve as places for healthy eating. In mid to high-income countries, where school lunches are oftentimes in the form of processed foods and unhealthy snack choices, Food From Our Gardens introduces healthy, organic, and nutritional alternatives. The aim of Food From Our Gardens is to reduce the health, economic, and environmental problems that result from food waste, by enabling schoolchildren to turn food waste into gardens.

Categories and Subject Descriptors (2 max) [Nutritional Health]; [Environmental Sustainability]

Keywords Food and Health, Composting, Nutrition, School Gardening

1. INTRODUCTION: AIMS AND BACKGROUND Each year, about one third of food produced in the world (approximately 1.3 billion tons) is wasted. According to the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, this is enough to feed 12% of the world’s population. Looking at specific regions and countries, in 2006 EU produced 89 million tons of food waste, which averaged 180 kg per individual [1]. Moving to another part of the world, in 2009 nineteen million tons of food waste was generated in Japan [2]. According to UNEP facts on food waste, each year consumers in high-income countries waste as much food (222 million tons) as the whole net production of food in Sub Saharan Africa (230 million tons)[3]. In high-income countries, we observe large amounts of food waste on a daily basis; while in low-income countries we see a struggle for obtainment of food, especially good quality food. Food waste is dangerous in more than one way. It creates not only economical and social problems but also environmental and health ones. While one third of the

2. DESCRIPTION Food From Our Gardens is an innovative approach to addressing the adverse health, economic, and environmental effects of food waste through a composting program at schools designed to enhance the nutritional diet of schoolchildren through school fruit and vegetable gardens. a)

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Food From Our Gardens brings a composting program to a local school by working with teachers to introduce a specially designed curriculum. Food From Our Gardens works with teachers in providing them with a curriculum designed to raise awareness of food waste as a global

b)

problem, and introduce gardening through composting as solution in which schoolchildren themselves can take action by bringing food waste from home to school.

healthy food availability for schoolchildren in households lacking food, and more nutritionally healthy diet for schoolchildren in schools where school lunches do not serve healthy food.

Through the Food From Our Gardens specially designed bags, schoolchildren use their bags to collect and bring food waste to school for composting as homework. The bags are specially designed to reduce odor and contain food waste in appropriate temperatures to prevent rotting. The idea is to bring food from home to school with the incentive provided by the curriculum of getting a homework grade.

4. CONCLUDING REMARKS

c)

Teachers and schoolchildren do a composting activity on a weekly basis. Through the academic year, teachers and schoolchildren add food waste and turn the compost.

d)

When the compost is ready, it will be used to plant fruits and vegetables for the new school garden. Once compost is ready for use, it can provide fertility to soil to grow fruits and vegetables. Schoolchildren will work together on the school garden.

e)

The model Food From Our Gardens uses can be replicated in many parts of the world and in many different settings.

Composting is easy to do with little capital and operating costs.

Garden-based learning is becoming a worldwide phenomenon with benefits that include personal, social and academic development, and attainment of life skills. Food From Our Gardens can also be altered to fit work and office environments, where working on the gardens can serve as a source of relaxation from work while taking action against food waste.

Acknowledgments: If your idea is the result of a group project, or a research project developed within your department or with the collaboration of your professor, here you have/(should) to indicate the source of the research, and you can cited where your idea come from. If yours is a work of study and personal research, maybe your research project thesis (doctoral degree, master thesis) you can here cite or thank people who have been important to you.

The school garden serves as nutritional, organic and healthy source of food for the schoolchildren. In schools situated in countries where food is scarce, the school gardens will ensure adequate nutritional intake. In schools situated in countries where food is commonly in processed form, the school gardens will ensure a healthy and nutritionally rich alternative.

3. APPLICATION AND RESULTS The approach taken by Food From Our Gardens addresses more than one problem by offering a solution that has more than one benefit. Through composting, Food From Our Gardens is taking food that was to have gone to waste creating environmental and health issues, and turning it into compostable material. The way Food From Our Gardens does this is innovative in the way that it introduces composting to schools, and enables teachers to work with their students to compost and to grow a school garden. By planting organic fruits and vegetables in the school garden, Food From Our Gardens is introducing healthy and nutritionally rich diets to schoolchildren. Results include less methane into the atmosphere from food waste, less burning of food waste and trash in low-income countries that cause health and environmental hazards, more awareness in schools on the problems arising from food waste, more active engagement from schoolchildren to be part of the solution through composting and gardening at school,

5. REFERENCES [1] Soledad, Blanco. 2013. Europe Combats Food Waste in the

Food Chain. Combatting Waste: Defeating the Paradox of Food Waste. Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, 2, 6.

[2] Marra, Federica. 2013. The Ecological Modernization of Japan. Combatting Waste: Defeating the Paradox of Food Waste. Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, 2, 44.

[3] UNEP, Food Waste Facts. www.unep.org/wed/quickfacts [4] Hoornweg, D., Thomas, L. and Lambert Otten.

1999. Composting and Its Applicability in Developing Countries. World Bank, 1-14.

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