Award-winning students and Michelin-trained chef tackle food waste

Hospitality students at Edge Hotel School aiming to improve sustainability in the industry have scooped a social media award after holding a series of events to promote ideas for reducing food waste.

The second-year students picked up the top prize in the Guardians of Grub social media reels competition, as part of Food Waste Action Week.

Their winning reel was praised by Guardians of Grub judges for its “great use of key stats and good reporting skills.”

It was part of a series of student-run activities for Food Waste Action Week which included a demonstration by Michelin-trained chef and food waste campaigner Rowen Halstead at Wivenhoe House Hotel.

Rowen, who worked at the Michelin two-starred Midsummer House in Cambridge, shared food waste hacks and discussed his ideas for how the hospitality industry can help support sustainable food systems. He also demonstrated how to make a pasta dish from stale bread, ricotta cheese made from leftover milk, pesto and surplus salad leaves.

Speaking afterwards, Rowen said: “The message we want to get across is to make sure the next generation of students going into the hospitality industry are conscious of the issue of food waste. It’s really important that they not only know about the issue of food waste, but also that they know what they can do to prevent it.”

The students also conducted a survey on campus, which found that around a third of Essex students threw away food once a week, most often because it had gone out of date or was left over after a meal.

Working with Colchester Foodbank and food industry experts, the students hosted cookery workshops and promoted waste-reducing meal kits and schemes to support donations of surplus food to food banks. They also used social media channels to highlight waste in food outlets.

Vaibhav Sharma, one of the students involved, said young people starting out in the food industry now could make a big difference: “We want to protect our own world and tackling food waste would be a good place to start. It’s a small step, but we have to start somewhere - in the future we could have a huge impact,” he said.

Dimitri Lera, lecturer in sustainability at Edge Hotel School, is an ambassador for Guardians of Grub, which works to cut food waste in the hospitality industry. He said he hoped the exercise would help equip students with the knowledge and skills needed to bring sustainability to their work: “This approach not only enriches their academic journey but also prepares them to address the environmental challenges our industry faces.

“By empowering our students to become proactive agents of change, we can ensure that they are ready to make a meaningful impact on the world and lead the industry towards a more sustainable future,” he added.

Header picture: Rowen Halstead, student Jessie Jacobs and Dimitri Lera. Courtesy of Alex Jacobs.