Environmental statement
Our programmatic environmental commitment
The impacts of climate change, including hunger, are disproportionately felt by those who are living in vulnerable contexts. By providing a meal in a place of education to children experiencing poverty, Mary’s Meals is playing a key role in responding to the impacts of climate change.
Alongside this, we recognise our responsibility to minimise the environmental impact in all we do. We are committed to ensuring that we make sound environmental decisions across our work, so that the children we serve have the best chance of developing in places that have experienced less environmental impact.
In our programming, we give particular focus to those areas with the greatest impact on the environment. As such, we are focusing on the three key areas below, and make the following commitments within this strategic period:
- Sourcing Food Locally
- At present, Mary’s Meals purchases the majority of the food used for school meals from local, in-country suppliers and farmers in each programme location.
- In this strategic period, we are committed to continuing to purchase affordable, reliable and quality local food, and to working to localise our food sourcing even further, to maximise benefits to the environment, local communities and national economies.
- Clean Cookstoves and efficient cooking
- At present, Mary’s Meals uses fuel-efficient cookstoves in some schools across many of our programmes.
- In this strategic period, we are committed to seeking additional funding that will allow us to invest in locally appropriate and affordable clean cookstove technology across all our programmes.
- Minimising food and packaging waste
- At present, the approach to food ordering, storage and preparation in our programmes ensures that food waste is minimised, and we work with communities to re-purpose packaging to the extent possible.
- In this strategic period, we are committed to continuing to minimise food waste through using best practices in food ordering, storage and preparation, and to work with suppliers and communities to find innovative ways to further minimise packaging waste.