They're not homeless or unemployed, yet they scavenge in bins for discarded food.

1. Freegans They're not homeless or unemployed, yet they scavenge in bins for discarded food. They must stop, they’re breaking the law – most bins are on private land. People throw a third of our food away. Supermarkets dump hundreds of tonnes of it. It's such a waste. We Freegans are helping the environment Who do you agree with?

2. Some Facts… Every year, 17 million tonnes of food is being put into Britain's landfill sites. Around 4 million tonnes is perfectly alright to eat – fresh, tasty, and well within its sell-by date. Wasted Food I am the manager of a local supermarket. I want to stop the waste of millions of tonnes of good food. But how? Reasons people throw out food Leftovers on plate 55% Part of food not eaten 52% Past use-by date 48% Supermarkets’ ‘best kept advice’ Supermarkets’ specials Smelt off 46% Buy one, get second one half price! Looked off 35% Use by 20.09.09 Past best before date 32% Didn’t like food 19% 3 for the price of 2! Best by 20.09.09 Food overcooked 18% BOGOF! Bought something I already had 2%

3. In 2008/09, the food redistributed by FareShare contributed towards more than7.4 million meals. Every day an average of 29 000 people benefit from the service FareShareprovides. The FareShare Community Food Network has over 530 Community Members across the UK receiving food, training and advice.

4. Up2d8 maths Teacher’s guide In these days of the recession the amount of food that is wasted is incredible. One third of the food we buy is thrown away, 17 million tonnes of food are taken to be buried in landfill sites annually. As a result ‘freeganism’ is on the rise. Freegans are people who live from the food and other things that have been thrown away as waste. This issue of Up2d8 explores the food waste in this country and what can be done to minimise it. … continued on the next slide

5. The spreads give opportunities for developing the thinking skills and speaking and listening. They also provide opportunities for work on mathematical concepts including fractions, percentages, big numbers and data handling. You might find it helpful to look at the following websites for information on this before you work with the children. Alternatively, you could ask the children to research this themselves. BBC News The independent How Stuff Works BBC Inside Out

6. 1st spread: Freegans ●Lead a discussion on the types of food that might be thrown away at your local supermarket and why e.g. food has reached or will shortly reach its sell by date, fruit and vegetables just because they are bruised or the wrong shape, too much of one type unsold. ● Focus on use and sell by dates for a bit of quick mental maths. Talk about what the terms mean. Write some future dates on the board and ask the children to work out how long until they will be taken off the supermarket shelf. Try some that cross over two months. This is a good opportunity to rehearse the months of the year and how many days in them. ● Discuss the freegan way of life - is what they are doing acceptable, making use of good food instead of letting it go to landfill or should they stop because, as the man says, they are trespassing on private property and so breaking the law? ● After the discussion, you could take a vote, make a tally and turn it into a pie chart or similar. Asking them to vote ‘agree with the freegans’, ‘don’t agree’ and ‘not sure’ would make a more complicated pie chart to construct. Depending on the age of the children, you could ask for an estimated diagram or an accurate one. ● Discuss the health and safety issues of raiding rubbish bins: finding food that has ‘gone off’, cutting fingers on tin or glass etc. ● Make up some rules for the freegans: e.g. take gloves and a torch, don't pass a ‘No Trespassing’ sign , be careful when choosing what to eat. If in doubt, throw it out , always leave the bin as clean as you found it, if the bag is ripped or any goods are exposed, just leave them behind, go to small to medium shops - larger chains have their bins locked away, wash all the items you find before eating them.

7. 1st spread: Freegans, continued… ● Focus on the amount of food some supermarkets through away each year. ● Can the children visualise that amount. Convert from tonnes to kilograms (1 000kg = 1 tonne). Show a 1kg bag of sugar or potatoes or something familiar to the children. 100 tonnes would 100 000 bags of sugar! You might want to be supermarket specific: Tesco and Sainsbury’s publish their landfill statistics on the web: 131 000 and 91 000 tonnes respectively. ● The children could design a Freegan Game - a board game with a route around shops, collecting items for a meal. They could use the provided blank gameboard. ● You could arrange a visit a local supermarket to see what they threw away yesterday.

8. 2nd spread: Some facts… ● Discuss the amount of food people waste. What do the children think about the fact that four million tonnes is perfectly alright? ● Explore the place value of the millions number and discuss zero as the place holder, e.g. what would the number be if the zero was taken away from the hundreds position. Using digit cards or writing on whiteboards ask them to make up other millions numbers and read them to each other. ● Focus on the terms ‘bogof’, 3 for the price of 2, and buy one get a second half price. Lead a discussion on the positives and negatives of these e.g. people can buy cheaper food but they might buy extra food that they won’t eat so it will be wasted. ● Use this as an opportunity for some mental calculation. You could display real items of food, or pictures, and the children could create shopping lists and cost them with items at the deals discussed, e.g. two tins of beans at £1.10 each (buy one get a second half price), three melons at £2.75 each (3 for the price of two), two loaves of bread (‘bogof’). ● What would be better than these deals? People have suggested replacing ‘bogof’ deals with half price offers, would this be better? ● What do the children think is meant by ‘use by’ and ‘best by’? There seems to be some public confusion about these, particularly ‘best by’ Apparently one in two consumers throw food away when it reaches ‘best by’ dates which is unnecessary. ● Discuss the idea of ‘best kept advice’, would this be better than the other dates? What could the advice include? Did you know that apples stay fresh for up to 14 days longer than the sell by date if kept in the fridge? Two-thirds of consumers interviewed in a survey didn’t!

9. 2nd spread: Some facts, continued… ● Ask the children to design a poster with their ideas which could be used to help the lady and her wish to stop our shops and supermarkets throwing millions of tonnes of good food away each year. ● Focus on the amount of food people throw away. Look at the pie chart and ask them what fraction is represented. You could use this as an opportunity to explore fractions of different types. ● The children could draw a circle and pretend it is a dinner plate. They could divide it into fractions, e.g. thirds, sixths, twelfths, as stipulated by you or of their own choosing. They could then draw food in each section and work out which would be wasted if one third was to be thrown away. ● One third of food we buy is thrown away - what is one third? Explore fractions by looking at items like a packet of biscuits for example - sort into 3 equal piles and show that one pile would be thrown away. What about if you had to throw away a third of your lunch/sweets etc? ● Look at the table showing the reasons why food is thrown away – are any of these reasons that the children might have if they waste any? ● This table provides an excellent opportunity for work on percentages. They could choose two or three reasons and make up a pie chart as a visual representation of that percentage. ● You could change the percentages to fractions and then reduce them to their lowest form.

10. 3rd spread: FareShare FareShare is a charity that provides food to some of the most vulnerable people in our society who suffer from food poverty. They are mostly people on low or no income with poor access to affordable nutritious food and who lack the knowledge, skills or equipment to ensure food is safe and prepared properly. They use surplus food that would be on its way to landfill sites. They get much of it from some of the major supermarkets, e.g. Sainsbury’s, M&S and Tesco. For more details of this charity visit this website: FareShare ● Discuss FareShare’s work with the children: do they think this is a good idea? Why/why not? ● You could ask them to research this charity and make up a fact file about them. ● Focus on the information statements and use it as an opportunity to explore the numbers mentioned. ● Ask the children to identify the examples of types of food that FareShare are often given. Estimate and count the number of each. You could use this as an opportunity to rehearse 1/10 more/less. ● Take a vote on their favourite types of food on the spread, make a tally and ask the children to construct a block graph, bar graph or pictogram of the results. ● Discuss who would be able to use other leftover out-of-date foods? The Salvation Army? Homeless shelters? ● You could also discuss why the supermarkets cannot just allow shoppers to help themselves at the end of the day - no one would buy anything, we'd all wait till the end of the day and the shops would go bust! ● Some shops give free out-of-date flowers to churches for floral displays. What other specific items can children think of that could be useful to particular groups of people?