Life in Salford 36 • March 2022 20
Climate change School meals going green
School cooks are going back to the classroom to learn new ways to serve up fruit and vegetables as part of reducing their service’s carbon footprint. The service has seen an 11 per cent rise in pupils choosing plant-based meals since November last year because of climate change awareness and 10 per cent of Salford schools now have one meat free day a week. Salford City Council’s Citywide school catering service is aiming to keep its customers happy and well fed while being as ‘green’ as possible. During the pandemic the service kept its kitchens open for children of key workers as well as supplying healthy food boxes to hundreds of children learning at home. It now produces more than 9,100 school meals a day as well as providing bread, pasta, salad and fruit. For some youngsters, it’s their most important meal of the day.
“We take care to make sure all our food, from free range eggs to sustainable seafood, is ethically produced and locally sourced wherever possible to reduce food miles. Some of our schools have their own vegetable gardens which the children help to maintain so they can eat what they grow.”
“Whether they prefer plant-based lunches or traditional recipes or a mix of the two during the week, we encourage pupils to eat lots of fruit and vegetables and try new dishes," said Councillor David Lancaster, lead member for environment, neighbourhoods and community safety. Our staff are very creative, offering tastings, sometimes letting children help cook meals and linking dishes to the curriculum and environmental themes to make it fun and help the children learn." Citywide has also introduced an online pre-ordering and payment service, which parents and pupils can use from any device to order by the day, week or whole term and see information about recipes and nutrition. Preordering also helps the service cook to order, reducing food waste, although any suitable surplus food is donated to the local community. The service is also working to save energy, reduce and recycle packaging and has re-routed deliveries direct to locations instead of collecting them centrally and then redistributing them to reduce food miles.
