2023 Teens Dream - Reducing Food Waste in American Schools

My dream is to help reduce food waste in American schools. For my science fair project last year, I created an app prototype that addresses one of the major contributing factors to school food waste – the overproduction of food that is not consumed by students at lunch. This directly relates to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #12, Responsible Consumption and Production. Most schools just prepare lunch according to a set menu and do not factor in student choices when creating these menus. And many schools do not track what students are actually eating. Furthermore, they do not factor this data into their food purchasing and ordering systems.  My app addresses all these oversights and flaws. The app allows students to submit their lunch choices before food is actually ordered and/or prepared depending on the time frame set by the school. This data can be compiled for the school and used to determine more accurate food calculations for purposes of places food purchase orders and/or food preparation on a daily basis. Thus, the use of the app would reduce the amount of food unnecessarily ordered, prepared, and wasted. If selected, I would like to refine the prototype and test the implementation of the app in several pilot schools. Even with a time limited pilot test (for example, one month), I should be able to determine food waste reduction on an annual basis as well as potential cost savings to that school.