North Catholic’s food waste education initiative

Elizabeth Miller, Ministry Lead for Marianist Encounters at North Catholic High School in Cranberry Township, PA, sends us this update about educating the students on food waste reduction.

For Catholic Schools Week each year, our school community participates in formation, a service project, and fun activities to celebrate. This year, as a school-wide Marianist Encounters project, we decided to plan our Catholic Schools Week theme around food waste reduction. Our LIFE students came up with this idea last summer, and seeing their idea become a reality was very exciting.

We started the week with a school assembly, starting with a viewing of Just Eat It, a documentary highlighting the amount of food that is thrown away each day in the United States. A brief presentation about Laudato Si' and Marianist Encounters followed the video.

Following the assembly, the students separated their food trash from other trash after lunch. We measured the total food waste in the school at the beginning and end of the week to see if we could reduce it by the end of the week. We ended the week with a $5 Spirit Day (dress-down day), benefitting Catholic Charities.