In September, I started to collect data on the amount of food waste occurring in Deerfield’s cafeteria during both lunch and dinner. After several days of data collection, I took the average values of food waste during both lunch and dinner. In September, an average of $422 of food waste occurred during lunch and $481 occurred during dinner. These numbers served as my benchmark for a typical amount of food waste occurring at Deerfield on any given day.

After I collected this data, I began to spread awareness about food waste through the use of the Foodnomics app. I hosted information sessions and reached out to my peers about using the Foodnomics app to track the amount of waste that was wasted every day they accrued on any given day. I encouraged them all to try to reduce their food waste by lowering the amount of money they wasted on any given day, using the Foodnomics App’s Daily Breakdown feature.

After this, I collected some more data on food waste in October, November, and December. Here are my results:

1. For lunches, food waste was down 18.75% from September to October, 8.06% from October to November, and 9.89% from November to December.
2. For dinners, food waste was down 13.63% from September to October, 5.44% from October to November, and 5.74% from November to December.

Although I recognize the journey is not done, I’m very proud of the progress I’ve made so far and will continue to update you guys on my journey as I spread Foodnomics more throughout the school!