[Faculty of Business Administration] PBL class held at Hyogo Prefectural Kobe Commercial High School on Thursday, November 14th

On Thursday, November 14, Otemae University Faculty of Business Administration held a class in response to a request from Hyogo Prefectural Kobe Commercial High School to support "inquiry-based learning" for second-year students. The format is an industry-academia collaboration PBL method, and the theme is "Knowing and thinking about social issues." In the class, we took up "food loss reduction," which is familiar to high school students, as a specific social issue, and as an example, Mr. Shin Jinguji of the House Foods Business Strategy Planning Department gave a lecture on "House Foods Group's efforts to reduce food loss."
First, Faculty of Business Administration Leader Masaaki Kitamura Professor gave an overview of the content of the learning and how to proceed, and then Mr. Jinguji explained what food loss is, the current situation of food loss, and its impact on the global environment and economy. It seems that many of the students knew the words of food loss but did not know much about the specific contents, and the weight of household loss in food loss is about 50%, while awareness of food loss is progressing in various questionnaires, there were many answers that there was nothing that could be thought of as a cause, and the ranking of foods and ingredients that have been thrown away recently. I listened intently to the lecture while taking notes.
Next, he explained the "Project that can be done with more curry" that the House Foods Group is working on to reduce food loss. This is a proposal to "reduce food loss with curry, which is fun and delicious, by taking advantage of the fact that curry, which is the main product of House Foods, goes well with various ingredients and can be eaten deliciously." Specific activities included the awareness and actual situation of food loss through a questionnaire survey, understanding and disseminating changes, tips and points for storing ingredients without waste, introduction of recipes using ingredients that tend to be wasted, and voices from customers who actually received them. In addition to questions about food loss and projects, the students also asked questions such as "Why does House Foods sell tofu in the U.S.?" and "How many countries do you operate in overseas?"
At the end of the lecture, the students were presented with a task to actually work on, "Based on today's lecture, propose a unique idea to halve business-related food loss around the world!", and Professor Kitamura gave a lecture on tips (how to find ideas) for tackling the problem. First, he explained that food loss itself is a global risk, such as the fact that CO2 emissions from food loss are comparable to the amount of exhaust gas from automobiles in the world, and that there is a relationship between food loss and hunger and poverty. Next, the students were asked to name specific food-related companies, ask them to imagine what kind of industries, industries, and companies emit business-related food loss, and advised them to refer to their efforts to reduce food loss from their websites and use them as hints for ideas.
The students will work in groups of four to present their results in class around February. I would like to look forward to the students' "unique ideas" that are not bound by precedent.

(Source: School Public Relations)