Sherbrooke CDEC taking anti-food waste message to local schools
The Sherbrooke community economic development corporation (CDEC) and the École internationale du Phare launched a pilot project this past week aimed at getting students to think about reducing their food waste. Called the “Pèse-gâchis,” or waste scales, the project involves targeted sorting of student lunch waste into different identified bins and then weighing the contents of each bin as a way of being more aware of what students are throwing away.
“It is about changing consumer habits,” said Sondès Allal, socioeconomic revitalization agent with the Sherbrooke CDEC, describing the project as a cousin of the “Frigo Free-go” public-access refrigerator project that now has several locations across the city. Both the “Pèse-gâchis,” and the “Frigo Free-go” have at their heart the idea of reducing food waste, Allal explained, although this new project takes a more education-based approach by attempting to make the 850 students
at the school more aware of their own habits.
According to the revitalization agent, at the end of this first week the students will tabulate the final results and use that information to create an action plan for food waste reduction
“The more schools that get on board, the further the message will spread,” Allal said, noting that a second high school in another part of the city is already on the way to starting a “Pèsegâchis,” of its own.
“This highlights an important reality we live with,” said Patrick Levasseur, principal of the École internationale du Phare, speaking of food waste in a high school environment. “the goal of the activity is to have a clear idea of the severity of the issue.”
As of the start of Thursday’s lunch period, fruits and vegetables were leading the waste pile, having made up just over 7.5 kilograms of waste over the previous three days. With 15.45 kilograms of total food waste weighed over the same period, that makes fruit and vegetables nearly half of all the food that the student body has thrown away.
The “Pèse-gâchis,” project was carried out with the help of Festivals et événements verts de l’estrie (FEVE), who provided the containers needed for sorting.