Councillor Isabelle Mackenzie
The Highland CouncilHere in Inverness, where I’m based, there are fast food places within the school catchment areas already. The main issues for me have been the litter trail and problem with urban gulls. This has been a local issue with the increasing problems with gulls and food waste.
My other point is not just near schools, general behaviour of public with their disposing of the waste after their meal! Shopping centre areas that have fast food outlets, are often a total disgrace with the litter piling up in bins. This has encouraged gulls to operate where they hadn’t before.
Setting the Scene for Fast Food Waste
The local secondary school, Millburn Academy, has numerous options for pupils at lunchtime to source fast food; KFC, MacDonalds and local supermarkets. You can tell where the pupils have been with the litter trail on their way back to school.
There are discarded packets and drink containers causing a problem in the local residential community of Crown. There are numerous complaints to the school. This has also caused an increased in the already over population of urban gulls competing for food waste here. I have been involved in looking at better provision of waste bins in the area and engaging with the secondary school to assist. Pupils need to understand better the lifecycle of where their food comes from.
The Risk of Fast Food to Young People’s Health
This is causing an added risk to a young person’s lifestyle and a future of developing serious health issues. We need to address how to better educate young people about where their food comes from.
Concern that children are not understanding how food is grown, and where it comes from. Also, the bad habit of discarding the packing on the streets with the effects to the environment. Their habit of buying take aways is not economical in the long run and reduces their understanding of how to buy foods and cook from scratch.
This could increase the issue of becoming obese and long-term health problems. My thoughts, in post pandemic years, are families becoming more dependent on fast food takeaways delivered to their homes and decreasing their ability to budget and meal plan.
We need to educate our younger generation about the food journey from field to table. With better efficiency on the recycling aspect of the food packaging.
Supporting Schools with the rise of Fast Food
One factor that has not helped with the local secondary school here, is when it was rebuilt, 14 years ago, the canteen only had capacity for approximately 400 pupils out of 1,000, now bulging with 1,200 plus pupils. A mobile food van used to be outside the school perimeter, but thankfully has stopped. This was a huge problem to school and parents, as there was no jurisdiction to prevent the van trading there.
I do not know of this is this being addressed in areas around Inverness through the planning system as planning is devolved to Holyrood.
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