Food waste comes from food that is not eaten and/or not used for any reason, and that gets thrown away. In many cases, food travels long distances and through different channels before it ends up in our homes and on our dining tables. It starts with growers and farmers and moves along the chain to food factories, food distributors before it reaches supermarkets and grocery stores from where we usually buy our food. In the United Arab Emirates, the average food waste per person is estimated to be 2.7kg per day making it among the highest in the world.

Gillian Abbygale Robles from The Waste Lab family shares her expertise on Food Waste & Composting. 

In general, food waste is mixed up with other types of waste in our bins and is picked up and transported to landfills. In the United Arab Emirates, food waste makes up around 40% of landfills. In landfills, and contrary to popular belief, food waste does not decompose but gets trapped under large piles of other garbage. Without the right environment to decompose (mainly oxygen, water, and decomposer organisms), food waste releases Green House Gases (GHG), such as Methane which is 25 times more potent that CO2 and is a huge contributor to global climate change.

What if there is another way to save food from being wasted and to help the environment, at the same time?

Enter composing - nature's very own food recycling system! Composting breaks down organic material (food waste being one of them) into vital elements essential for soil health and plant growth. Composting also returns excess carbon molecules, found in methane and other GHG’s, to the Earth, by storing them into our soil, avoiding excess emissions of this heat-trapping substance into the atmosphere.

0-2:

Children are never too young to learn about food and food waste!

Let’s start by asking them where they think their food comes from. Yes, mummy and daddy,  prepare yummy food for us, but who is growing our fruits and vegetables for us? Have they seen any local farm or farmer in the United Arab Emirates or back in their home country? If not, you can show them a picture of a farm. You can tell them that in many cases, the fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese have to fly on a plane or has to come on a big ship through the ocean before it reaches our home.

Then, for example, when mummy gives us a banana, what happens to the banana peel? If we must throw it away in the bin, where do they think it and other garbage go? You can show them the building’s garbage chute or a waste management truck (a picture or when one passes by). This truck goes from one house to another collecting all the garbage. When it is full, it goes to a landfill. Show them a picture of a landfill and ask them if they have seen one before, and what they think is in there?

To make it more exciting, watch Peppa Pig episode on Compost (Season 3, Episode 7). Then use aKINDemy books to further explore the topic and the types of foods to provide certain examples.

3-5:

Let’s start by asking them where they think their food comes from. Yes, mummy and daddy, our family and the restaurant prepare yummy food for us, but who is growing our fruits and vegetables for us? Have they seen any local farm or farmer in the United Arab Emirates or back in their home country? If not, you can show them a picture of a farm. You can tell them that in many cases, the fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese have to fly on a plane or has to come on a big ship through the ocean before it reaches our home.

Then, for example, when mummy gives us a banana, what happens to the banana peel? If we must throw it away in the bin, where do they think it and other garbage go? You can show them the building’s garbage chute or a waste management truck (a picture or when one passes by). This truck goes from one house to another collecting all the garbage. When it is full, it goes to a landfill. Show them a picture of a landfill and ask them if they have seen one before, and what they think is in there?

A banana peel, the unfinished dinner that is thrown away, tomatoes and cucumbers that went bad, and other kinds of garbage like plastic bags, old shoes, a broken TV, and a candy wrapper. Explain that these landfills are big and bad for the environment and make Earth and us sick, so we need to find a way to make them smaller. How can we do that? By making sure we do not throw away any food – by finishing all our meals and by saving the peels and other parts of our fruits and vegetables, that cannot be eaten, in a special bin – the Compost Bin. The Compost Bin is a place for us to keep all these uneaten fruit and vegetable parts so we can give them back to nature, instead of throwing them away in landfills. Then, nature helps us recycle and turn them into soil which helps the farmers grow more fruits and vegetables for us.

To make it more exciting, I recommended you watch Peppa Pig episode on Compost (Season 3, Episode 7).

6-9:

Let’s start by asking them if they know what happens to food when we throw it away in the bin. Do they know what a landfill is? Show them a picture of a landfill and explain to them the negative impacts of it - polluting the land, the air we breathe and making Earth, animals, plants and us sick and taking space of land that we can use for parks and playgrounds for us and our friends. So, this means we have to make sure we don’t throw food in these landfills.

We can do something right from our home, from our school, and with our family and friends. Can they think of how?

• Save leftovers for another day.
• Share extra food with others.
• Compost the food scraps (fruit and vegetable parts) that we cannot eat.
• Ask them if they have heard of Composting (many children in this age group have already come across this term in school).

Composting is nature’s way of recycling our food scraps. What composting does is turn food scraps into something that smells and feels like soil and which can be used to grow plants, trees, fruits and vegetables. In order to compost, you need 4 things:

• Browns; they are usually dry and brown in color. Examples are dried leaves, cardboard, paper egg cartons, newspaper, and egg shells.
• Greens; they are usually fresh and moist. Examples are fruit and vegetable scraps, used coffee grounds and grass clippings.
• Air (Oxygen)
• Water

How does composting work?

Through the power of decomposition!

Decomposition happens when organic matter (your greens and browns) breaks down in the presence of oxygen. Living organisms, or microbes, feed on the organic matter, but they need air to breathe and water just like all living organisms, including us!

We've curated some wonderful titles highlighting the ever increasing problem with food waste and have also some humorous and child-friendly books highlighting the unmentionable poo (because what goes in has to come out!).