The colourful tree of saving food at home

Creating a colourful display of forest trees to record and celebrate food-waste reduction.

• pupils raise awareness about food and saving food habits in their households,
• pupils develop good habits of reducing food waste at home,
• family members develop good habits of saving food,
• pupils visualise the progress of developing different habits of saving food in their family and of other pupils,
• all pupils contribute to leaves in the canopy, which is becoming more lush and colourful - team spirit motivates the pupils to make more improvements at home,
• the tree presents only the result of saved food (leaves) and not the pupil's names, so pupils who don´t contribute at first, don´t feel exposed but are positively motivated,
• children learn that trees absorb CO2 which is also released from food waste and thus help reduce global warming. When we save food, we act like a tree.

One hour to find a nice tree trunk in a picture or to draw it. Make it at least the size of B2 paper and leave the space for a canopy.  

Cardboard or a stronger paper for each month´s tree, colourful pencils and a golden marker for lining the leaves.

Pupils monitor how their families can save food and present their activities in the classroom. Instead of presenting them in a chart or poster, they show each activity with its assigned colour as a coloured leaf on a tree in the classroom.

The leaves are anonymous because the action is what counts, no matter who did it, so it is not about competition. Pupils who are not able to contribute don´t feel exposed. When the family members of the pupils perform a food-saving activity from the chart, the leaf has a golden line.

Every month they add a new tree.  At the end of the school year, a colourful wood of trees will be on the walls.

The more actions the pupils' families perform, the more colourful and lush the canopy of the tree will be. In the classroom, pupils can also observe how the tree canopies change throughout the months, which activities families perform and how active they are.

Key steps:

Ask pupils what are the most common reasons in their family to produce food waste. What they can do to save food? Take a look at FAO poster 9 easy tips to fight food waste.

1. Prepare a chart of actions for saving food at households with pupils  (look at the example, which you can use or adapt to your case). Assign a colour to each action.  If all classes use the same chart, you can compare their progress!
2. Give each pupil a table and a monthly calendar so they will not forget to mark their actions at home and draw it in the classroom.
3. Decide where you will display this colourful forest of trees which grows a new tree each month.
4. Draw a tree trunk on paper at least of size B2, so that you will have enough space to draw the leaves. 
5. Stick the first tree trunk on the wall of the classroom.
6. Stick the chart of 'saving food at home' by the actual tree trunk.
7. Put the colourful pencils and the golden marker by the actual tree trunk, so that pupils can immediately draw the leaf.
8. Pupils draw the leaves daily. Not all of them will add a new leaf every day, but some pupils may often add more leaves.
9. Each pupil who made one of the actions of saving the food at home from the chart, draws a leaf in the colour of this action.  E.g. I take a small portion of food and come back for more if I´m still hungry. This action is marked in orange colour, so the pupil draws an orange leaf. If a family member did one of the actions, the pupil draws a leaf in this colour and lines it with a golden marker.  
10. The aim is to have a tree with as much colour in the canopy as possible, with some golden lined leaves.

If every pupil does one action per day, the tree will soon be full of colourful leaves. What colour they are? Does your canopy have a golden shine?

The colours of the tree tell which actions are most popular among pupils' families and which still need improvement. At the end of the year, canopies will be very colourful, and pupils and their families more aware of saving food.

Society: Pupils learn about food-saving habits and of other people, they develop good habits. Pupils learn that there are many ways of how to save food.

Environment: Pupils learn that food waste is bad for the environment, some people are starving, it is not good to throw food away. They learn that food waste is a big problem in developed countries. It also affects the climate which can create many devastating meteorological events.