In honor of Earth Day on April 22, let’s teach students our best practices for reducing food waste and upcycling. These initiatives educate our students about the reduction of food waste and its importance in the foodservice industry. It is the perfect time to incorporate new ideas into your current lesson plans.

Begin here with these ideas from creating a garlic herb salt to canning. This list is meant to spur creative upcycling activities that fit into your kitchen classroom lifestyle. Perhaps you have other foodwaste reduction plans in place. If so, share them with me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. In a future article, I can reshare the complete activity list.

Chimichurri	Crystalized strawberries	Florida avocado butter
Fresh Ricotta	Fresh tomato juice	Fruit leather
Garlic herb salt	Green tomato chutney	Sauerkraut
Oven dried tomatoes	Pesto	Tomato dust
Canned tomatoes

Look at this PowerPoint presentation focusing on teaching students how to reduce foodwaste and covering many of the above activities. Click here for a PowerPoint lesson on canning to help in your classroom instruction.   

These initiatives show your students how they can contribute to a better, more productive society through the foodservice industry. Throughout discussions in my class, students have taken it upon themselves to further investigate ideas. By creating a learning environment that promotes constructive-based criticism, as opposed to judgment-based criticism, my hope is to give students an active learning environment promoting the generation of ideas, free from fear of criticism in case of failure. Students are actively encouraged to try new ideas, especially when it comes to using upcycling new products.

The success of our efforts to reduce food waste can be shown through the students’ enthusiasm to try new ideas and participate without hesitation. Here is a document that chef instructors and lab assistants can use as a guideline to help be successful in instilling creative thinking outside the box in a safe and productive manner.

Chef Jennifer M. Denlinger, PhD., CCC, CHEP, is the Culinary Management Program Department Chair at the Poinciana Campus of Valencia College. She is also the vice president of ACF’s Central Florida Chapter. Additionally, Chef Denlinger earned the 2020 Innovation Award, sponsored by CAFÉ and the Idaho Potato Commission, for a creative escape room based on safe food handling procedures. She also earned the 2021 Green Award sponsored by the United Soybean Board and was runner-up in 2021 for the Postsecondary Education of the Year sponsored by Sysco Corporation.