Food waste is one of the largest sustainability challenges facing childcare centres, but with a sustainable waste strategy, you can reduce waste, save money, and educate children about resource use. Reducing food waste requires initial effort and attention, but the benefits make it one of the most worthwhile sustainability initiatives a childcare centre can undertake.
Different Approaches for Preschool and Long Day Care
Food waste looks different across different centres, and strategies should reflect this.
In preschool settings, the focus is often on lunchboxes and family engagement. This can start at family orientation by sharing expectations around waste reduction and offering practical examples of healthy, waste-free lunchboxes. In long day care, attention must also be given to internal practices within kitchens and classrooms.
Steps to reduce Food waste - Preschools
Track and Analyse Patterns
Linking Food Waste to Climate Action
If food waste becomes an ongoing concern, involving children in a waste audit can be a powerful learning experience. Audits make waste visible and provide a starting point for fun, engaging, and meaningful waste reduction projects.
Conducting audits can help identify the source of waste, such as:
- Over-catering due to unknown absences
- Food stored too long or going out of date
- Meals not being enjoyed by children
Resources such as Love Food Hate Waste offer practical guidance, including tools developed in collaboration with the EPA, to help services respond effectively.
Reducing food waste is not only about efficiency — it is a critical climate action. According to the Drawdown Project, food waste reduction is one of the top five actions we can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Working With Children, Families and Teams
Children should be at the heart of food waste initiatives. By asking for their ideas, listening to their suggestions, and genuinely exploring solutions together, sustainability becomes a shared goal. It is important to focus on educating parents on naked food: less waste, no wrapping and avoiding single use. When families, educators, and children are all informed, empowered, and involved, food waste reduction becomes embedded, meaningful, and lasting.
Steps to reduce Food waste - Long Day Care
Track and Analyse Patterns
Keep a simple log of which foods are consistently left uneaten and their quantities. You might discover that children love the pasta but rarely touch the sandwiches, or that fruit servings are too large. This information allows you to adjust menus, portion sizes, and preparation methods based on actual consumption rather than assumptions.
Simple observations are enough, but undertaking a food waste assessment can give you deeper insights into where your waste is coming from and what solutions can solve it. BBP helps members run waste audits for free and with assistance whenever you need it.
Serve Smaller Portions with Seconds Available
Rather than plating large portions that may overwhelm children, start with smaller servings and allow them to ask for more if they’re still hungry. This approach respects individual needs and significantly reduces plate waste. It also helps children learn to recognise their own hunger cues, gain agency, and practice asking for what they need.
Involve Children in Menu Planning
When children have a voice in what’s served, they’re more likely to eat it. Hold regular discussions about favorite foods and conduct taste tests of new items before adding them to the usual rotation. This helps create a feeling of agency and enthusiasm around meal times.
Get Creative with Recipes
Off-cuts and trimmings can make great stock for soups, toppings for pizza or crackers, and muffin flavouring for a sweet treat after a little bit of processing. Having a list of waste-saving recipes helps educators repurpose food creatively rather than discarding it. It’s a great opportunity to educate children about food waste and get them involved in the design and testing of these recipes too.
Practice Proper Food Storage
Proper storage reduces food waste from spoilage. Ensure your refrigerator and freezer maintain correct temperatures, store food properly on the shelves to extend their shelf life, and organise storage areas using a first-in-first-out rotation so food doesn’t spoil. Label items with opening dates and check regularly for items approaching the best-by to use them before they expire.
Time Meals Appropriately
Children who are excessively or not yet hungry won’t eat healthy portion sizes and are more likely to produce food waste. Ensure snack and meal times are properly spaced, and consider whether your schedule might need adjustment. Morning tea that’s too close to lunch, afternoon tea served too late, and irregular late snack timings can interfere with children’s appetites and ability to finish their food.
Start Composting
Composting diverts your remaining food waste from landfill and transforms it into valuable garden soil. You can use the composted material in a sustainable garden or share it with families if you don’t have one. Composting also provides new learning activities for children, such as learning about decomposer organisms and tracking the composting process. This normalises composting and teaches them that organic matter is a resource, not rubbish.
Educate Children About Food Waste
We often tell our children, “Don’t waste food,” but do they really understand what it means? Having conversations about where food comes from, the effort required to grow it, and the environmental impact of discarding it to landfill help children understand why we try not to waste food. Reading books about food systems, visiting farms, and growing food in your centre’s sustainable garden all reinforce these ideas. You can’t have a waste-aware centre without getting your largest demographic involved in the project!
What next?
Composting and worm farms
You may be eligible to access heavily discounted compost and worm farms through your local council on the Compost Revolution website. Click HERE for more information.
How BBP Can Help
BBP doesn’t just provide educational resources. We also offer waste assessments worth their weight in gold, at absolutely no cost to our members. Our waste assessments will find your worst sources of food waste and help you create solutions to tackle them. It’ll save you time and money in the long run.
Click below to learn more.
After you complete a waste assessment or a more in-depth audit, you may be eligible for a grant or rebate to buy waste equipment under the new FOGO (Food Organics and Garden Organics) mandates. We’ll help you check if you’re eligible, decide the best equipment, and apply for the program.
Want to get started? Answer this 1 minute questionnaire and we’ll start your waste assessment.