Year 6 Food Waste Project
As part of our projects about food sustainability, Year 6 have been learning all about the impacts food waste has on our planet. We learned that over 1 millions tonnes of food is wasted in the UAE alone each year and shockingly that if one quarter of the food currently lost or wasted around the world was saved, it would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people!
In class, we conducted experiments to try to regrow common food waste. We use scraps from our teacher’s kitchens and tried to regrow them in our classrooms. The results were amazing! After only days days in water and with sunlight we regrew spring onions, leeks and lettuce! Many of us were so inspired by the learning in our classrooms we decided to take it further and explore what else we could grow at home using scraps and seeds from our kitchens!
During our projects on food sustainability, we also learned how far our food travels to reach our plates! Living in the UAE and in a hot desert climate we explored how in this country we reply heavily on lots of imported produce. We tracked the food miles of many common food items in our grocery stores and were shocked by the results: bananas travel 7208km to reach Dubai from the Philippines, beef travels 13,351km to reach our stores from Argentina and tomatoes travel 6,604km to get here from the Netherlands. We took this one step further in class and mapped out the journey of each ingredient from some of our favourite meals!
Another important topic we explored was ‘The Face of Food’- who grows the food we eat? Is our food ethically sourced? We learned about Fairtrade and how our choices in the supermarket can impact the lives of ours around the world. We researched the lives of farmers in other countries and discovered how by choosing Fairtrade items in the shops we are helping them receive a better wage for their produce and that money from these items is invested back into their communities to help with important fundamentals such as education. We were inspired to make a difference and even wrote letters to supermarkets and global leaders to persuade them to make a change and to promote people to become better global citizens.
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