Green Tomato: Turn-Key Teaching Tools for Sustainability
01 October 2010By Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE
Interactive activities for communicating foodservice principles of “green.”
Sustainability education is rapidly becoming a part of culinary and hospitality curricula cross the country, and there are few teaching tools that front-line educators can easily access and use in their classrooms. Attendees at the last CAFÉ Leadership Conference were given one such tool that we created at Kendall. For those who couldn’t attend, we’re sharing it today, along with another one, which will be posted permanently on the CAFÉ Web site in the Resource Center under Lesson Plans.
Kitchen Self-Audit Exercise
This exercise leads students through a commercial kitchen and teaches them to observe areas where energy and water are being wasted, a skill that will prove invaluable to them throughout their careers. Basically, it is designed to increase sustainability awareness in the same way as we teach our students to be aware of sanitation issues. The exercise will lead them through the following areas:
- Lighting
- Kitchen Equipment
- Heating, Cooling & Ventilation
- Water
- Kitchen Practices
Included with the exercise itself is a supplementary PowerPoint presentation that illustrates the kinds of things students should observe and visually explains some of the concepts such as different kinds of lighting, fixtures and equipment features.
In addition to the exercise, there are a number of additional activities that you can use to expand the educational experience such as calculating savings that would be realized if remedial actions were taken to save energy or water. Remember, sustainability is also about sustainable business practices.
Sustainability Trivia
The second tool is a trivia game that highlights some of the facts about sustainability in an interactive and fun environment. Exploring categories such as fossil fuels, the foodservice industry, water, climate change and waste-stream reduction, students will learn some surprising statistics and how they can make a huge environmental impact by taking just a few actions.
If you’ve developed exercises or other learning materials about sustainability that you would be willing to share with your fellow educators, please send to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so that we can feature it in future articles.
Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE, is dean of Kendall College’s School of Culinary Arts and vice president of Laureate International Universities Center of Excellence in Culinary Arts. Kendall College sponsors the annual CAFÉ/Kendall Green Award.
Download: Self-Audit Classroom Exercise
Download: Supplement to Self-Audit Exercise
Download: Sustainability Trivia
Download: Sustainability Trivia Answer Key
Additional Info
- CAFÉ Talks Podcast Lesson Plan: 1
Download attachments:
- Sustainability_Trivia.pptx (201 Downloads)
- Sustainability_Trivia_Answer_Key.docx (190 Downloads)
- Self_Audit_Classroom_Exercise.doc (179 Downloads)