At Mt. Greylock, fruit is a mandated lunch component. “Students who purchase a school lunch are required by state law to take a fruit with their lunch even if they don’t want it,” explained school nurse Nicole Russell. This means that lots of fruit is often left uneaten and therefore thrown away and completely wasted. Although the law was put in place to improve the health factor of school lunches, a fundamentally positive motivation, many students still choose not to eat their piece of fruit. As a result, after lunch each day, there has been a considerable amount of fruit that ends up in the garbage can. Last school year, the amount of wasted fruit caught the attention of the cafeteria workers and the Wellness Committee.

The Wellness Committee saw how much perfectly good fruit was being thrown away because students did not want it and knew something needed to be done. At the same time, there had also been the problem that some students needed an extra boost of energy for practice, rehearsal or another afterschool activity and did not pack a snack. “So we came up with the idea of having students who did not want their fruit to pass it to someone who would,” explained Russell. Now, with the Pass Your Fruit Forward initiative, students can eat the fruit that would normally be thrown away.

Not only do students use this supply of fruit for morning snacks and after school; faculty and staff often need a boost as well. So what better way to re-energize than to eat a piece of fruit that would normally be thrown away and wasted?

While some might not see fruit as the ideal snack, experts disagree. According to Russell, “fruit is a nutritious food and plays an important role in teen development. It has vitamins and minerals which help boost your immune system and keep you from getting sick.” Fruit also helps to maintain skin and eye health, which is extremely important for students. Because of all the healthy elements and vitamins that it contains, fruit gives the extra energy boost often needed for extracurricular activities.

The Pass Your Fruit Forward initiative began because students were coming into Russell’s office looking for extra food during break and after school. Russell brought the problem to Karen DuCharme’s Life Skills class.

When the Wellness Committee saw the wasted fruit and the fact that students needed food, it was decided that the most mutually beneficial solution to this problem was to have students drop their uneaten fruit into a bowl, currently located conveniently near the utensils in the cafeteria.

The initiative continues to provide substantial amounts of food for hungry students and faculty, and the bowl filled with fruit will continue to be located in Russell’s office after lunch every day. Students can help the initiative simply by placing any unwanted fruit from their school lunch into a designated bowl in the cafeteria, which is washed daily.