Ask your child to ask their teachers: what happens to the school’s food waste? How much waste is produced daily/weekly/annually? Does the school compost its organic waste? Does the school have a small scale anaerobic digester that turns food waste into usable bio-gas that can be used to cook school lunches or in science demonstrations. A digester also produces heat that can warm up school bio-domes for all-year-round food growing. The left-over material from digestion is organic fertiliser that can be used on vegetable plots. It begins a switch to greater self-sufficiency for the school, it demonstrates the ‘circular economy’. How many schools are outsourcing school meals to e.g. global facilities management companies? These external companies exist to make profit for shareholders. E.g. How many Bidfood vans do you see delivering to schools? According to the Bidcorp’s 2024 annual report, UK revenue was up 24%, with trading ‘profit’ up by 9.6% to over £82m. What percentage of that was school dinners? How much of that profit came from school authorities and how much has your council tax gone up? Why can’t children produce their own dinners at school with the help of a small kitchen staff? Children can learn to cook, they can grow some of the produce at school, they can recycle their own waste rather than relying on a local authority to collect it and then (as happens in my borough of Barnet) burn it! Please encourage your children to ask more questions and as parents, we must ask our schools to measure their food waste and publish results with a view to encouraging a reduction in organic waste and costs. Our local primary school produces a large skip load of food waste per year and that does not include the waste produced by external food suppliers in the preparation of school dinners. Note: there are over 32,000 schools in the UK.