Zero Waste Cuisine for a Sustainable Future Erasmus Project

Project Title

Zero Waste Cuisine for a Sustainable Future

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Cooperation between educational institutions and business

Project Summary

Restaurant industry generates tons of trash by using oil, packaging ingredients, napkins, straws, disposable cutlery and wasting huge amounts of food. According to the European Commission, 88 million tonnes of food are wasted annually in the European Union. That is about 143 billion euros and 3.3 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions. As a matter of fact, one third of food produced globally is lost, either during processing or at a retail or consumer level, the latter being more common for industrialized countries. In Europe, around 12% of total food waste comes from food services. Zero Waste should be priority in restaurants. Considering this situation we as socially responsible organization (for 14 years working with socially excluded people and training them to become cooks, waitress in the salad bar “Mano Guru”), maintaining socially responsible restaurant business, this time have decided to take part in 2nd direction of International Zero waste network and take challenge – to work on reduction of restaurant industry’s ecological footprint while combining the forces of socially and environmentally responsible restaurant business and vocational schools and raise awareness of zero waste by educating future professionals of catering field from vocational schools, aiming to use 100 percent of each ingredient in cooking process.

In order to raise awareness and educate students not just locally, but as well at international level, we aim to set an international comprehensive analysis on zero waste situation in our and partner countries, create and support Zero waste community and work on development of Zero waste Methodology module for VET schools in accordance with the professional standard of the cookery course, the standard of vocational education and training, the methodology of the development of modular vocational training programs, the concept of the development of the modular vocational training system, the legal acts of the partner countries with an aim to get the Module accreditation and include into the cookery qualification programme as an optional module.

During the project 4 intellectual outputs will be carried out:
IO1 – Comparison and Analysis of Zero Waste Situation
IO2 – Development of methodology for zero waste trainings module in vocational schools
IO3 – Platform of 0 – WASTE Community
IO4 – 0 – WASTE Recommended Methodological Material for Practical Trainnings

Expected results of project are:
– to develop free and open educational resources: methodology of zero waste module (IO1) and Guidance Methodological Tool for Practical Trainings (IO4) for VET schools with an aim to get the Module accreditation and include into the cookery qualification programme as an optional module.
– to sustain fruitful partnership of VET schools and socially, environmentally responsible restaurant business at local and international level;
– to raise awareness and provide professional skills on zero waste lifestyle while teaching students to use sustainable approach in cooking;
– to create international community of Zero Waste lifestyle supporters;

In this project 4 different countries from Lithuania, Portugal, Italy, Austria (5 organizations) are participating involved in the project due to experience projects objectives and geographical diversity.

This project is a small step towards sustainable future and the example for others how to go O-WASTE.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 117247 Eur

Project Coordinator

Socialiniai Paramos Projektai & Country: LT

Project Partners

• Profesinio mokymo centras Zirmunai
• Akademie für politische Bildung und demokratiefördernde Maßnahmen
• AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS D. CARLOS I
• ASSOCIAZIONE DI PROMOZIONE SOCIALE LINC