Ontario EcoSchools is a…

Ontario EcoSchools is a charity that works with over 1,800 schools and 56 school boards in Ontario’s public education system. We represent 50,000 student environmental leaders in k-12 schools that set targets, initiate campaigns, track changes and improve environmental learning in their schools impacting over 900,000 students province-wide. Ontario EcoSchools’ mission is to nurture environmental leaders, reduce the ecological impact of schools, and build environmentally responsible school communities. We are the only award-winning voluntary, bilingual, and free certification program in Ontario that certifies schools for their environmental achievements.
After consulting with our network of school boards, we have put together the following comments. These comments represent feedback from our experience working with the education sector as well as direct comments from members of our community.
Ontario EcoSchools supports the Action Plan objective 1.1 and 1.2: Reduce Food Waste through the development and promotion of educational tools and incorporate waste reduction and resource recovery activities within schools. Education and training, especially in k-12 schools, should be the first step in any prevention strategy. Comprehensive data collected by school boards across Ontario indicates that ~50% of the waste generated in schools is food or lunchtime waste and therefore efforts should be placed in educating and engaging students and their parents to bringing waste-free lunches and sorting organic waste properly. Changes in behaviour are difficult to achieve without this clear and consistent messaging carried out by an informed and engaged school community. In our experience over 12 years of implementation of environmental behaviour change, the catalyst to successfully implementing new systems is a group of dedicated caring individuals. Within the EcoSchools framework, we call this an EcoTeam. It is made up of representatives from both the student and adult population of the school and has the support of administration.
The Ontario EcoSchools program provides schools with the platform to establish an EcoTeam and the resources and tool which can help to support the proposed changes suggested in the Food and Organic Waste Framework. The program is non-competitive which allows other environmental initiatives such as our municipal green bin program to link in and support the EcoTeam efforts. In order to address food and organic waste with the 2.1 million students in the 5,000 schools across the province, strategies that provide EcoTeams with the tools and training will significantly impact the ability of this sector to meet targets set out in this Framework. Overtime, this strategy will need ongoing support and training to key stakeholders in the education sector to ensure the correct behaviours are implemented across all schools. Please include a strong focus on k-12 education as part of this strategy.
The Action Plan objective 2.9 which outlines a disposal ban on organic and food waste will also require substantial training and education of all the members of a school community. The Ontario EcoSchools program provides an engagement strategy for our school communities, linking to these already established efforts in changing school culture and behaviour which also connects to 2.11 would be beneficial to achieving these ambitious targets.

[Original Comment ID: 211971]