KEY POINTS:
Parents who prepare or pay for a good school lunch for their children may be horrified to see the healthy sandwiches and fruit that are thrown in the classroom rubbish bin.
At one Auckland school this week, the Weekend Herald went on rubbish duty. The bin used by
9- and 10-year-olds yielded, among its junk-food wrappers, banana skins and crusts:
* Partly eaten apples.
* Two whole bananas.
* Two unpeeled tangelos.
* An uneaten wholemeal bread sandwich filled with grated cheese and carrot.
One of the bananas was in a brown paper bag, suggesting it had been part of a bought lunch, explained a staffer of Richmond Rd School in Ponsonby.
This reporter's rubbish bin research confirmed the finding of a Massey University study that most of the unconsumed food in school bins after lunchtime consists of healthy items.
Researcher Dr Emma Dresler-Hawke, who checked lunchboxes for their nutritional content, was shocked to find rubbish bins harbouring sandwiches, some still wrapped, with healthy fillings such as tomato, cucumber and cheese, plus whole bananas and unopened yoghurt.
More than 80 per cent of the unconsumed food items in the bins at the six schools were sandwiches, fruit and dairy products, which are among the foods children should be eating.
She suggested schools implement a "zero-waste" policy, forcing pupils to take their lunch leftovers and rubbish home and face their parents.
The survey of more than 900 lunch boxes found that just one in 10 contained food that met nutritional guidelines.
The average lunch was a white-bread sandwich, a packet of potato chips and a biscuit or chocolate bar.
At Richmond Rd, principal Hayley Read said that based on the small amount of rubbish the school had to dispose of since it had started separating out paper that could be recycled, relatively little food was being thrown out.
"I suspect there are apple cores and banana skins. I don't think they are throwing away their sandwiches at all.
"We monitor the eating. At lunchtime the children have to sit inside for 10 minutes, so the teachers are very much on their case. They have to consume what's in their lunch box and then they are released.
"The teachers don't really check what's in the lunch boxes [which is not their job] but as they walk around they see them."