From October 22 to November 5, the Upper School Just Food Club held a schoolwide Food Waste Challenge in partnership with Rye Country Day’s Sustainability Program. 

The challenge invited students across all three divisions to reduce their food waste and engage in a friendly competition to see which division could achieve the greatest reduction over a two-week period. 

Through a thoughtful campaign of posters, community meeting talks, and Schoology posts, students were reminded to only take what they planned to eat, finish what’s on their plates, and encourage friends to waste less. The Lower School Sustainability Club (H.O.M.E., which stands for Helping Our Mother Earth) jumped right into advocacy work by visiting every Lower School classroom to promote the challenge. Just Food Club representatives and AP Environmental Science students were stationed in the LS and MS/US dining halls sporting “Love Food, Not Waste” shirts and congratulating members of the “Clean Plate Club.”

Flik Dining Services supported the effort by helping to track the daily food waste for each division by weighing bags of discarded food on an industrial scale. To ensure a fair competition, the Just Food Club calculated percentage changes in food waste per division. After two weeks of the awareness-raising challenge, the Upper School emerged victorious as the division with the greatest percentage of food waste reduction.

This month, sustainability work continues around campus as students focus on the America Recycles Challenge, which launched on November 15, America Recycles Day.

Congratulations to all of our students on their energetic engagement with these initiatives aimed at taking care of our planet!