Schools are in turmoil as they prepare to throw away 15 million school dinners.
As the nation enters its third national lockdown, schools are in distress as they prepare to throw away a week’s worth of school dinners.
National waste collections company BusinessWaste.co.uk is tasked with collecting the mountains of perfectly good although ultimately perishable food.
Mark Hall spokesperson for the company said “ This is a national disaster, the government have well and truly let the schools down, they have allowed them to open and prepare for the weeks ahead, which of course means stocking the fridges high for this weeks school dinners and now those dinners are going in the bin”
“The schools simply don’t have the freezers required to store all the perishable food and that unfortunately will mean the vast majority is to be thrown away.
“The amount of food waste caused by a sudden lockdown is staggering – if they had been given warning then it could have been sent to other places, but now food banks will be over whelmed and they typically only take non perishable goods”
As three million school meals are served each day and with the average cost of each meal standing at £2 this means that over £6,000,000 a day or £30,000,000 a week of produce will be lost as schools typically order a week in advance
The vast majority of schools do not have dedicated food waste bins, which could divert the food waste to an anaerobic digestion plant, instead, it will end up rotting in a landfill.