Cooling instead of Bucketing

Studies show that many schools in Vienna regularly generate large amounts of food waste from lunch. Despite efforts to optimize order quantities, the amount of waste remains high. For hygiene reasons, meals that have already been served cannot be reused. Even unopened but reheated meals would generally still be edible; however, due to a lack of suitable refrigeration facilities, they cannot be redistributed and must be disposed of. At the same time, social service organizations have an ongoing need for food that currently cannot be adequately met due to logistical and legal hurdles. As a result, significant potential for waste prevention and resource conservation remains untapped. Legal and hygiene concerns raised by MA56 (Schools) and MA59 (Market Office) were recently clarified, and with proper refrigeration of the food, nothing now stands in the way of donating food from school catering services. The goal of the project is to procure and install five rapid coolers/blast freezers at selected school locations. These devices enable the rapid and hygienically safe cooling of surplus, originally sealed food (e.g., from +65 °C to +3 °C), so that it can be donated to social institutions in compliance with the law. The project involves the selection, procurement, and installation of the equipment for schools and nonprofit organizations identified in advance. Through collaboration between schools and social service organizations, the project aims to establish long-term regional partnerships and reduce food waste.