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EU-Mind Project Save food
Part 2: A
Report interview Den Dikken (Supermarket)
For my subtopic saving food in supermarkets I interviewed mister Den Dikken, the manager of the Jumbo in Oostkapelle. I interviewed him via e-mail because of corona and he preferred not doing it live. He was very helpful and answered my questions extensively. I thought of most of the questions myself, but my group members got up with some as well. I asked him the following questions:
Interview Supermarket questions:
1.How much food do you buy per week?
2.How much food do you sell per week?
3.How much food do you throw away per week?
4.Do you think you could do anything different to reduce food waste?
5.Do you have any employees that you ask for advice about food management?
6.Do you do anything to reduce food waste (such as bringing excess food to the Voedselbank)?
He responded with the following:
1. About 20,000 products on average, but a lot of my colleagues buy a lot more as they have a supermarket in a big city and have a lot more customers. This average also doesn’t really say a lot, because in summer, when there are a lot of people on holiday here, I sell a lot more than in winter.
2. About 18,500 products on average per week, but as said above, this number can change a lot.
3. About 700 products on average, this is always about the same because in winter and in summer we always try to buy just a little more than we expect to sell so that no one goes home without the product they wanted.
4. I think we could, we do quite a lot already but there still is some food waste. Maybe an idea could be giving away excess foodto people who really need it.
5. Yes, we have meetings every now and then in which we talk about problems and solutions for those problems. Food management is often something we discuss in those meetings.
6. We certainly do, we bring just a little over half of the excess food to organisations like the Voedselbank.
As our main research question is: How can we reduce food waste at home and at school? this interview was not the most important part of our research, but it is big part of wasting, so my conclusion is still pretty important for the world we live in. The conclusion I drew from this interview is that supermarkets do quite a lot to reduce food waste and try to do more by thinking of new ideas.
Report interview Miss Wagensveld (School)
For the sub topic saving food at school I interviewed Miss Wagensveld (head of our school) and Miss Joyce van de Nieuwenhuizen (from the catering at our school). I interviewed Miss Wagensveld the head of our school (Nehalennia). I interviewed her via the e-mail because of corona. She responded very happy and wanted to help me with our project. Miss van de Nieuwenhuizen did not respond yet, I also interviewed her also via the e-mail. I designed the questions myself and asked both of them exactly the same questions:
Interview School questions:
1.How much food does the school buy per week?
2. How much of the purchased food does the school sell per week?
3.How much food of the total amount of food that school buys per week is waste?
4. What is the school already doing to save food?
5.What else can the school do to reduce food waste.
6.How can we (students) reduce food waste at school?
Miss Wagensveld responded with the following answers:
1.The only thing the school buys is fruit for the staff: a box of mixed fruit every day that is usually completely empty at the end of the day. What remains in the box just goes on the next day.
2. Everyday the box with fruit is completely empty so theres no waste!
3. Nothing!
4. Well, actually we don't do anything about it… we buy that fruit and that really always applies
5. I wouldn't have an answer for that so soon.
6. I don't know whether students should save on food: young people should also eat responsible food and not be tempted to eat (too much) snacks and other unhealthy things.
So, our main research question for our project was: How can we reduce food waste at home and at school? The conclusion I can draw from my interviews is that the school does nothing to reduce food waste at this moment and is maybe going to try to reduce food waste.
Interview expert:
Q: What are the effects of food waste on climate change?
A: Throwing away food wastes resources and help sources used for production of the product like: fertile soil, water, labour and energy. If we saved all of this we could save tons of stuff and give it back to nature so it will be healthier
Q: How much food waste is needed to have effect on the climate?
A: Anything wasted will have a tiny bit of effect on climate change so the less we waste the slower the climate will change.
Q: How do you reduce food waste?
A: You could reduce food waste by keeping track of how much you eat and how much you wasted and try and buy less for the next week, you could also use your freezer to keep your leftovers a little longer, also the expiration date is just an indicator so use your senses.
Q: If you reduce food waste do you slow down climate change?
A: Only by a little per an ammount of food but you do.
Conclusion: Wasting food does indeed have an effect on the climate and reducing food waste by keeping track of what you eat or by preserving your leftovers you should be able to reduce climate change. You can't completely prevent it but all the little bits help.
Waste food diary:
I had to make this waste food diary and I put it into a table so it was really easy to see what I wasted in a week. The first thing I saw was that I didn’t threw alot of food away, the meal where I threw the most food away was the dinner and that was because on Monday I made dinner for 4 pupils but my sister didn’t eat with us, so we had to throw away one whole meal. But overall I didn’t waste a lot of food.
For this diary of implementing nine tips at home I asked my father and sister the questions and I filled it in. What you can see is that my father a lot of these things does, there are only 2 things he does very seldom and that is ‘Start small’ and ‘Donate the surplus’. The last one I named (Donate the surplus) we actually never do, and we will probably do that more often now because of this diary. Overall it’s pretty much in the middle because some things we have never done and some things we have already made it a habit.
Part 2: B
The Difference between food waste and food loss is that food waste is waste of food by people making decisions, food loss is that there is a loss of food by decisions from food suppliers.
For the question What are the effects of food waste on climate change? We interviewed an expert his answer was: Throwing away food wastes recources and help sources used for production of the product like: fertile soil, water, labour and energy. If we saved all of this we could save tons of stuff and give it back to nature so it will be healthier
One of our group members kept a diary during a week the result of this that their family did not waste a lot of food only when they prepared a meal but one of the family members did not join dinner they threw that meal away.
These were our nine tips on saving food:
Start small ****
Leave nothing behind *****
Buy only what you need ****
Don't be prejudiced ***
Check your fridge ****
First in, first out *****
Understand dates ****
Compost **
Donate the surplus *****
The rating for the tips are behind the tips with a different amount of stars the more stars the better the tip.
We also looked at what we threw away on day at school we threw away nothing that day which is very positive. We Interviewed Miss Wagensveld from our school and she responded with the following: What else can the school do to reduce food waste? She answered: I wouldn't have an answer for that so soon. Our group did come up with three suggestions to reduce food waste at school:
- If a student has food left at the end of the day then do not throw the food away but take it home so you can eat it the next day.
- Think about how many food you are going to eat before you pack your lunch.
- If you buy food in the supermarket then do not throw away the food you took to school just save it for the next day!
Part 2: C
Our main research question was: How can we reduce food waste at home and at school? Our answer is: we think that we do not enough to reduce food waste and at school right now, we also think that this need to be changed and that this can be changed if the supermarkets and the schools would try to look for ways to reduce food waste and also ask help from experts if they can not find ways to save food themselves. Our group also thinks that with the 9 tips everybody could save a lot of food at home.