Food Waste Education Resources

RESOURCES FOR FOOD WASTE EDUCATION

Urban Green Lab believes education leads to action, especially in reducing wasted food in our cities. In 2023, we teamed up with the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh to create a series of videos about how Urban Green Lab uniquely delivers education on sustainable food consumption in classrooms, households, and workplaces. To supplement those videos, we also created a series of toolkits in collaboration with the Environmental Law Institute full of resources you can use every day as an educator, a professional, or a family member. Read more below about our experience educating on food waste and how the resources can be used.

Thank you to the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh for supporting the Nashville Food Waste Initiative and providing the funding to support this project.

The Background

Urban Green Lab is a nonprofit that teaches communities how to live sustainably in Nashville, Tennessee. We believe education is transformative, and we envision a Nashville where sustainability is a part of everyday life for everyone.

Our approach is to organize teams and individuals, train them on making sustainable choices, and connect them with peers to continue learning and resources that make a difference. We focus on spaces where people work, learn, and live, like classrooms, households, and workplaces - places where the systems and culture of our city are formed.

In 2016, the Natural Resources Defense Council started the Nashville Food Waste Initiative as a part of a pilot program to bring together citywide stakeholders and test food waste prevention strategies. Over the years, the World Wildlife Fund, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI), and Urban Green Lab have collaborated to find city-scalable solutions for making a difference on food waste.

In 2023, the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh funded a project to expand this work and to share scalable solutions for other cities, communities, and organizations looking to promote sustainable food consumption. The resources on this page are the result of their generous support and years of experience in Nashville.

Explaining the Resources

Watch the following videos for an overview of our programs in classrooms, households, and workplaces - places where the culture of our city is formed. We aim to integrate thinking about food waste into each of these places and the daily decisions of Nashvillians.

Use the resource guides compiled by ELI to find vetted, science-based resources, categorized by audience and medium, for educating on sustainable food consumption. The topics for the guides were selected from the modeled solutions for reshaping consumer environments in ReFed’s Roadmap to 2030.

Applying the Resources

Use these resources and videos to inform programs and curricula on sustainable food consumption however it makes the most sense for you - whether that means learning from what we have done in Nashville to build your own educational programs or to expand the education and culture of sustainable food consumption you already enjoy.

Urban Green Lab is always happy to connect with you to ideate, troubleshoot, or celebrate. Please contact Stephanie Roach at stephanie@urbangreenlab.org to connect.

Program Overview Videos

Watch the following videos for an overview of our programs in classrooms, households, and workplaces and how we integrate learning about sustainable food consumption in places where culture is formed.

Classrooms

Households

Workplaces

Resources By Topic

Use the resource guides compiled by ELI to find vetted, science-based resources, categorized by audience and medium, for educating on sustainable food consumption.