Uneaten food that is wasted has become a significant problem in Western Australia (WA), so the Waste Wise Schools Program (WWS) in WA decided to do something about it. 

What did we do?

WWS teamed up with BehaviourWorks and Monash University’s Faculty of Education to tackle avoidable food waste in WA schools.

We conducted a rapid literature review to see what others around the world had done to address the issue.

What did we find?

The rapid review revealed two behaviours that would reduce avoidable food waste in schools; the first was for parents to involve their kids more in the selection, preparation and packing of the food they took to school and the second was for kids to make sure they took any leftover food back home.

Two behaviours, two target groups. BWA then took a ‘deep dive’ to find out more.

Trial intervention

Six hundred parents and 600 students in WA were chosen at random to take part in a survey. They were asked which of these behaviours they were currently doing and about their beliefs of the advantages/disadvantages, and barriers/enablers of these behaviours.

The results showed that change isn’t as simple as growling “make sure you eat your sandwiches”.

Getting parents and their kids to adopt these behaviours would require some tweaks and a kind of homework.

Food waste turns out to be a small problem that adds up to a large one – most kids eat most of their food most of the time, but they sometimes don’t.  ‘Sometimes’ multiplied across many schools equals ‘big’.

It also turns out that parents and students thought that the two target behaviours were actually no brainers (the best kind of behaviour change) and would not be much trouble to take up.

Despite a slight pushback from some parents (faced with proof that their kids were not eating everything), they agreed to give it a go.