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This study examines how public high school students experience, interpret, and reframe food waste as an entrepreneurial learning issue. Although school food waste is often approached as an operational, nutritional, environmental, or behavioral problem, little is known about how students make sense of this phenomenon in school life. Drawing on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the article analyzes 18 in-depth interviews conducted through the Significant Actions technique with students enrolled in an entrepreneurship track in a public high school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The findings show that food waste was initially experienced as a visible but normalized feature of the school routine. Of the 18 participants, 16 described moral discomfort associated with discarded food, including guilt, indignation, sadness, or reflective questioning. In addition, 14 identified systemic factors as relevant causes of waste, especially rushed meal times, menu repetition, portioning practices, refectory organization, and limited student voice. Rather than attributing waste solely to individual behavior, students gradually interpreted it as a systemic issue shaped by school organization. The study contributes to entrepreneurship education by showing that entrepreneurial learning may emerge from lived encounters with ordinary institutional problems when these are pedagogically reframed as opportunities for responsibility, problem framing, and social value creation.