Year 11 students are learning about sustainability in the kitchen culminating in a student and staff challenge where they have to make a family meal out of leftover food that would otherwise be thrown away.

Special guest Mary O’Rourke from Oz Harvest spoke to the group about the importance of reducing landfill. “It takes a bag of food waste put in the rubbish bin, 25 years to decompose,” she said.  Ms O’Rourke also said that the average Australian household throws out one out of five bags of fresh food that they purchase. “You may as well come home from the shops and just throw one out of every five food bags in the bin because that is what is coming out of Aussie households,” she said.

Oz Harvest collects unsold food from markets and deliver it to organisations that support charities, the homeless and people in need. This is food that would normally be thrown out by farmers because they have nowhere to store it and it would not keep for the next market stall. Ms O’Rourke said that the food does not always look the best, but it is healthy and nutritious.

The challenge included having a compost bowl on the workstation so even scraps from the cooking challenge would be put to good use and not added to landfill. Students and staff not only had to use all the ingredients in the mystery challenge but to use as much of each product as possible. For example, students had to use all of the broccoli, not just the flowerets but the stem as well.

Students and staff threw themselves into the challenge with gusto and the results were tasty and nutritious. There were no winning or losing teams as the real winner was the environment as students and staff learn to cook and eat more sustainably.

GCC Families can see all the photos here on Pixevety.