FOI Request - Food Waste

Request 101003159792

I am requesting the following under freedom of information legislation:

For the past 5 academic years up to 2021-22

1. The total cost of food waste in your primary and secondary schools?

By food waste I am referring to the total cost of school meals that were cooked and prepared but were not served.  

To clarify this is total monetary value of food that was not served.

Response 24-10-2022

1. We record food waste once a week; however, this includes plate waste. All primary schools pre order the meals, so the production kitchen prepare and cook that amount of meals plus on average 1 extra of each meal in case of children spilling or pupils changing their minds. As we do not record if these meals are used or not we cannot give actual figures. Therefore this information is not held. Information that is not held falls under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - Information not held.

Secondary schools have a different service as they provide hot snack, baguette/salad bar, main meals and hot grab and go. We do not record the amount of items that are not served and are thrown away. Therefore this information is not held. Information that is not held falls under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - Information not held. However, we do not have much food that is made and not served that is thrown away, as this is being utilised in other ways.