Food Waste Challenge

One of the most recent faculty additions at Brainerd Baptist School is our school nurse, Rachel Adams. This is her third year at BBS, and just about every person at BBS would echo my sentiments of, “How did we survive without her for so long?” One of the things that I appreciate about Mrs. Adams is not only her commitment to overseeing the health of our students, but also her desire to help students incorporate health into their everyday life. She is ALWAYS developing a new (and fun!) way to help our students think about their health. A few examples of some of her ideas include: the indoor walking track, the water challenge, the February fitness challenge, covering health topics (like heart health) in STEM class, and many others.
Below you will read about one of our new initiatives - helping our students realize (AND REDUCE!) the amount of food we waste each day. We are blessed with an amazing cafeteria staff, who do an incredible job of making our students great meals each day. Our new focus will show our students the amount of food that they throw into the garbage can each day at lunch. Mrs. Adams gives more details below about this initiative.

Food Waste Reduction Challenge

This past Tuesday, Feb. 19th, we launched our first ever food waste reduction challenge.  As I began researching food waste in our nation, I was blown away and saddened by the statistics.  According to a study conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Up to 40% of the food in the United States is never eaten.  But at the same time, one in eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table.” 

This challenge comes on the heels of BBS once again winning first place in WRCBTV’s Share Your Christmas food drive for most amount of food collected in the small school division.  This was not planned, but could not have been better timed.  Last week during chapel, our students learned that 1 lb. of wasted food is equivalent to approximately 1 meal.  Each day we throw away a lot of food, but our staff was curious to see just how much.  This curiosity and the desire, to be better stewards of what we have, led us to take action.  Wingfield Scale Company has graciously loaned us a commercial scale to make data collection possible.  We are so thankful for their partnership with us.

Stay tuned for updates on our progress.