Woodstock C of E Primary School

Pupils monitoring the food miles of their lunchboxes.

Dr Neil Heppell began his first science workshop by exploring with the pupils at Woodstock Primary School why we need food packaging and talking about the different sorts of packaging that could be used, depending on the product.

He then showed the children various packaged items and explored the pros and cons of each material. They also looked at how environmentally friendly each material was; paper for instance is biodegradable whilst others such as tin are infinite and need to be recycled. Plastics he thought should be used sparingly because of the difficulties in recycling them and the chemicals they leak into the ground as they break down.

The pupils were then set the challenge of packaging a variety of different foods in a selection of materials to test how effective each material was at preserving the foods over a two-week period. The chocolate was particularly popular!

In the final part of the workshop Neil discussed food waste, which left the children shocked to discover that 6.5 million tons of food are wasted each year - about a third of what is bought. He introduced ways to help reduce this waste, and left the class with food diaries to record what they eat and what they throw away, which Neil will analyse on his next visit.