Deforestation Free Champion Schools

There are five objectives in the Deforestation Free Action Plan that a school needs to do to achieve their Deforestation Free Champions Award:

1. Learn about tropical forests and deforestation
   
2. Investigate which forest-risk products are in your school 
3. Take action to influence change
4. Inspire others to take action 
5. Apply for your Deforestation Free School Award!

You’ll need to provide evidence for your journey, but it’s up to you how you present this. E.g. you could write a summary of your activities, detailing the work you’ve done and including any supporting evidence, such as, letters, photos of community events or press cuttings, or you could make a documentary style video or art project of your Deforestation Free process. However you decide to do it, you’ll need to send your evidence to [email protected] and the team will get back to you as soon as possible!

• Tropical forests are not only home to millions of people, plants and animals, but they also help to keep our climate stable by taking carbon out of the atmosphere. 
• They purify fresh water for humans and animals to drink and stop diseases from spreading into human populations. 
• Much of our food and medicine comes from plants that grow in tropical forests. 
• These are known as ecosystem services – the services provided by nature that help to create a beautiful, living planet, where humans, animals and plants can thrive.
• If we continue to cut down our forests to grow crops and graze cattle, we will have fewer trees to stop our planet getting hotter and humans, animals and plants will lose their homes.
• We need to protect our forests to protect our planet for current and future generations.

Tackling food waste

• 70% of the food we throw away could be eaten. 
• When we grow food we need huge amounts of land, water and energy, which can have a big carbon footprint. 
• If we throw this food away, all those carbon emissions have been created for nothing. 
• For example, perhaps a tropical forest was cut down to grow soy to feed chickens here in Wales. If that chicken then ends up in the bin, that is a terrible waste, as it’s not just the chicken, but also all the soy feed, water, energy and lost trees within that chicken. This is what is known as ‘embedded emissions’ – the carbon emissions hidden within a product.

Reducing how much we consume

• We can eat less, but better quality meat and dairy, for example, certified organic or 100% grass fed. 
• Animals who eat these nature-friendly diets eat either grass or sustainably sourced animal feed, so the likelihood of them eating soy and palm-based feeds from tropical forests is very low.
• We can also try to reuse products and materials as much as possible so we don’t have to keep cutting down trees. For example, we can buy recycled paper and furniture or second-hand items, like books and clothing. This is called the circular economy, where products and materials are kept in circulation as long as possible. 

Ethical certifications (eco labels)

• For companies and brands to use an eco label on their product, they have to follow very strict standards. These include things such as, nature-friendly farming, fair pay for farmers and workers, animal health and well-being and no deforestation. 
• Eco labels can help us understand if a product or ingredient has a lower social and environmental footprint. (See our quick guide to ethical certifications to find out more).

Currently, no eco label is 100% perfect, but along with the other actions outlined here, they are an essential tool to help us reduce our impact on forests, people and nature.

Using your voice

Making ethical choices for the products we buy, use and eat is not always easy. There are many things that can get in the way. This could be a lack of information due to poor labelling, cost, time or even opportunity. There is only so much we can do as individuals.

This is why the power of our collective voice is so important. We have to shout loudly to make our governments, councils and businesses do their bit to stop tropical deforestation, habitat loss and social impacts. 

• For governments, this could be by strengthening legislation to protect forests, nature and Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
• For local councils, this could be by looking at the food they produce for school meals and improving access to healthy, local and ethically sourced food.  
• For food and farming businesses, this could be through their food supply chains or the livestock feed they use to feed their animals.

Everyone has a part to play.

School meals are paid for by the local council who set up contracts with food suppliers and caterers to ensure you get nutritious meals at school. The council, as a public sector body, has to work towards achieving seven well-being goals from a unique Welsh law, known as the Well-being of Future Generations Act. 

Three of these goals focus on making Wales:

• Healthier – this means people living in Wales must have access to things like nutritious food.
• Resilient – this means our ecosystems are healthy, flexible and can adapt to climate impacts; and
• Globally responsible – which means we have to look at how our behaviours here in Wales affect people and nature overseas , e.g. how forest-risk products we import into Wales, like soy and palm oil, are causing deforestation and social impacts in the countries where they are grown.

By working with the council and school caterers on your deforestation free journey, you can demonstrate how climate and nature friendly food for schools is achievable. There are already lots of cities and communities around the world who are doing this through practical measures, such as local and ethical procurement, training and education and reducing food waste, often within the same budget as before.

Furthermore, today, ethically sourced does not always mean higher costs, for example, many Fairtrade products are now as cheap – if not cheaper – than non-Fairtrade alternatives. 

To help you in your conversations with the local council and caterers, here are some examples of the places already sourcing climate friendly meals for schools.

• Climate and nature-friendly food, Malmö, Sweden
• Healthier, organic school meals, Copenhagen, Denmark