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Food Waste Game

Middle, Secondary

Description

The Food Waste Game entitled “Still Good to Eat?” is an interactive, digital game designed to test players' knowledge about food freshness, food storage and common myths surrounding "best before" dates. It aims to teach students how to recognize if items are still safe to eat thereby helping to reduce unnecessary household food waste. The game highlights the critical environmental message that food sent to landfills creates methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25x more harmful to the environment than CO2. The game can be played in as little as 15 minutes and can be an individual or team activity.

The player is tasked with selecting 7 grocery items from the grocery flyer and properly storing the items once home. A store receipt is updated with each choice indicating the total for each item and amount spent. After initially storing each item, feedback is given to the player by the form of tokens and a color-coding system on the receipt. In round two, some of the items have been cut, opened and used then need to be stored once again with feedback provided on the receipt. In round three the players need to decide if items are still safe to eat and if they need to be stored, cut or thrown away.

At the end of the game, players can choose to play again with different foods, explore food waste tips and quick references sections or learn more about Second Harvest.

General Assessment

Recommendation of how and where to use it

The Food Waste Game provides a highly engaging activity that can be played multiple times. It aims to help students understand how to properly store food and reduce food waste. It addresses outcomes related to curriculum strands in Health, Technology and Home Economics. The game could be set up as a competition between students to see who can attain the best score.

Relevant Curriculum Units

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Themes Addressed

Citizenship (1)

  • Sustainable Consumption

Food & Agriculture (2)

  • Food Security
  • Local Food

Human Health & Environment (2)

  • Hunger and Malnutrition
  • Quality of Life

Waste Management (3)

  • Composting
  • Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
  • Source Reduction

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