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Climate Action Day 2024: Messages of hope and action8 November 2024
Cooking with Food Waste: A Global Cookbook
This summer, hundreds of students from across the globe came together to create their very own cookbook. With 25 recipes, the cookbook was created to celebrate the end of their year with Climate Action Schools, Take Action Global’s flagship programme committed to school-wide climate education learning and virtual exchange. Packed with delicious global recipes, from Peruvian snacks to Indo-Chinese flatbread, it is a recipe book like no other. Why? Because every recipe is designed using food waste.
The idea was sparked by Melissa Flynn, a Climate Action Schools educator from Chicago, Illinois.
“This cookbook was inspired by working with my students on Pie Day (use mathematical sign for pie 3.14) recipe. I teach six sections of classes, and the recipe they chose called for four egg yolks. After finishing with all six sections, this left me with 24 egg whites. I could not throw out 24 egg whites. We had other leftover ingredients in our fridge from previous recipes. So, the challenge to my students was to create a recipe using the egg whites and other leftover ingredients.” Melissa shared.
What started in Melissa’s home school of DePaul College Prep High School for us then quickly became a global movement, with classrooms across our Climate Action Schools joining in sharing recipes, using their own commonly wasted ingredients. Students led the action – sending photos from their kitchens and making delicious meals for their friends and family. The exercise allowed them to innovate meals they loved to be more sustainable, reducing food waste in their homes.
Flipping through the cookbook, you are exposed to colors, ingredients, and fun facts from kitchens across the world. Each school had a unique story to share along with their recipe, highlighting the vast cultural diversity within the programme.
“It was important to us to make the recipe book as diverse as possible. The contents of a pantry in Indonesia may look very different to a pantry in Türkiye, and we wanted as many people as possible to be able to use the cookbook recipes with ingredients they commonly used.” Hila Davies, Program Specialist shared.
In 2023, approximately 282 million people (21.5% of the population) across 59 countries faced acute food insecurity. From food prices reaching abnormal highs to the ongoing threat of climate change on food production, there is much work to be done to reach the Global Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030. However, conversations surrounding food justice must extend beyond food security to recognise how trade practices impact the social life of the food we eat. A key factor in combating food insecurity is managing wasted food and produce. Globally, approximately one-third of all food produced is wasted or lost, an amount that could feed 3 billion people. From eating seasonal, home-grown produce to boycotting non-fair trade products, there are so many ways to be part of the solution. Whether it’s leftovers or extra produce, there are so many ways our “trash” can be repurposed as a delicious, nutritious meal!
Tested one of our recipes? We’d love to see it and to learn of your ideas, too!
Tag us @TakeActionEdu and #ClimateActionEdu across social media.
Or send us an email via community@takeactionglobal.org.
