School, nonprofit pack up lunch leftovers for weekend meals

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Imagine how much school lunch food goes to waste on any given day. But one school district in Indiana is making sure what is left over doesn’t just get tossed into the trash.

Elkhart Schools is working with a nonprofit called Cultivate to repackage the food that is left over when lunch periods are over to give to students who may be going hungry when they're home on evenings and weekends, WSBT reported.

The pilot program was recently started at Woodland Elementary school, where students get breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday.

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Cultivate gathers food that hasn't been served from catering companies, food service businesses, and now Woodland Elementary, WSBT reported.

"Over-preparing is just part of what happens," Jim Conklin told WSBT. "We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out of it."

The meals then will be given to 20 students every Friday from now until the end of the school year, the television station reported.

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Each week they’ll get eight individual frozen meals.

And it seems to be thriving. School district officials want to expand the program to other schools.

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