Love food, Hate waste

Food waste is a global scandal and, of course, an inescapable topic when we talk about “food justice”. While 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted each year, there are 795 million people still suffering from hunger and malnutrition, suggesting that the disparity between food waste and food poverty is huge. According to the UN, if the amount of food wasted around the world were reduced by just a quarter there would be enough food to feed everyone on the planet.

Why are we wasting so much food? The causes of food waste are numerous and occur at all stages of the food supply chain, from food production, processing, retailing and consumption. In developing countries there are high levels of unintentional wastage known as “food loss” which often occur during production and processing due to poor transportation and infrastructure. In developed countries, on the other hand, there are low levels of unintentional losses but high levels of “food waste” at the retailing and consumption stage. Edible food is often thrown away by supermarkets because it doesn’t reach certain aesthetic standards or because there is too much of it. It is thrown away by restaurants and cafes because the large portion sizes they serve are left uneaten. At a household level, consumers throw away food because they have cooked or prepared too much or simply because they have not used it in time. In the UK, around 15 million tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year and nearly half of wasted food comes from British households. The foods most commonly found in British bins are vegetables, fruit, milk and baked items such as bread and cakes.

The consequences of food waste not only have a negative social impact – highlighting the increasing disparity of wealth– but also leave a heavy mark on the environment. The food we throw away is a waste of resources, a waste of time, a waste of money. Just think about all the land, energy, water and packaging used in food production, transportation and storage. If we throw away perfectly good food, all of this is wasted. Moreover, the carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is high, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of food waste. There are a number of organisations, social enterprises and charities taking action to prevent food from being wasted everyday. They run campaigns and take initiatives to tackle food waste, involving every stage of the food chain: prevention of food waste at the source, awareness-raising in consumers, processing of food surplus and redistribution of food surplus to people in need. Here is a list of 12 initiatives that tackle food waste:

(1) Think.Eat.Save

The Think.Eat.Save initiative launched by the U.N. Environment Programme and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation works with groups around the world to develop and coordinate projects to reverse food loss and food waste by providing consumers, retailers, leaders and the community with advice and ways to take action to reduce their food waste. It amasses and shares different methods of conserving food, including resources and steps that consumers and households can take to prevent waste.

(2) Feedback Feedback is an environmental campaigning organisation that aims to inspire the global community to implement positive solutions to tackle the problem of food waste. They work with governments, businesses and civil society at the international level to catalyse change in social attitudes and demonstrate innovative solutions to tackle food waste at the global scale.

(3) Feeding the 5000 Feeding the 5000, as a flagship campaigning event of Feedback, is a fabulous celebratory feast drawing attention to the amount of edible food thrown away. Tristram Stuart’ initiative is organising the world to prevent “wonky” fruits, vegetables and other food from being wasted. It encourages farmers to participate in the “gleaning movement” – where volunteers collect unattractive produce that would otherwise be wasted.

(4) The Pig Idea The Pig Idea aims to encourage the use of food waste to feed pigs and to lift the EU ban on the feeding of catering waste or swill to pigs. According to founders, restaurateur Thomasina Myers and food waste expert Tristram Stuart, around 20 times more carbon dioxide emissions can be saved by feeding food waste to pigs.

(5) Community Shop Surplus food is an inevitable occurrence in food manufacture and Community Shop has drawn on this to create the country’s first social supermarket. Quality food which might otherwise have been wasted due to wrong packaging or short shelf life is redistributed and sold at a fraction of the retail price in shops exclusively open to members, who are selected on a means-tested basis. In addition, each member is enrolled on ‘The Success Plan’ in their first four weeks, helping them identify the barriers that are preventing them from reaching their goals and putting in place a strategy to address them.

(6) Silo As the first zero-waste restaurant, bakery and coffee house in the UK. Brighton-based Silo has eliminated waste by trading directly with local farmers, using re-useable delivery vessels, and composting all organic waste which is, in turn, used to produce more food. The café is founded on the basic principles of unprocessed, unpackaged and untraveled food and even mills its own flour onsite.

(7) GroCycle GroCycle is a project launched by Fungi Futures CIC, an innovative social enterprise based in Devon, UK. Their aim is to keep coffee waste out of landfill by using it to grow gourmet mushrooms, produce fertile compost, and biofuel. They grow Oyster mushrooms from waste coffee grounds in GroCycle Urban Mushroom Farm and create an easy-to-use Mushroom Grow Kit to enable people to grow their own gourmet mushrooms at home from waste coffee grounds.

(8) The Real Junk Food Project The Real Junk Food Project is a collaborative effort between catering professionals and activists to bring about a radical change in our food system. As well as the positive environmental impacts of reducing edible food waste, the project also has clear social benefits through operating a strictly Pay-as-you-feel (PAYF) policy. This revolutionary concept offers an alternative to the conventional payment system as there is no price on any produce of the café. The system transcends monetary transactions and liberates people to use their skills and attributes, as well as money, to pay for their meals. By making people think about what they wish to contribute for their meals, the idea is to get society thinking about how they value food as a resource.

(9) Food Is… Food Is… started off as a documentary photography project by Chris King, initiated by a desire to raise awareness about the many and varied initiatives fighting to reduce avoidable food waste, and which if supported and nurtured could do so much more to reduce the amount of edible food that needlessly goes to waste. The site has become a platform for a collective voice, with people from organisations in some way connected to food waste invited to write guest posts and share information, facts and figures about the work they are doing.

(10) Fareshare In the business of food redistribution, Fareshare saves good food destined for waste and sends it to charities and community groups who transform it into nutritious meals for vulnerable people. Fareshare currently operates over 20 Regional Centres across the country to store this surplus food and redistributes it to over 1,923 charities and community projects.

(11) Food Cycle Food cycle is a community-focused charity jointly tackling both food waste and unemployment. Based on the fact that there are more than 4 million people affected by food poverty in the UK, and over 2.4 million people currently looking for work, Food Cycle targets vulnerable communities by reducing food waste, reducing food poverty and training volunteers. Since they started cooking in 2009, the charity has expanded to over 20 communities with the help of over 1200 volunteers.

(12) This is Rubbish

This is Rubbish is a community interest group that aims to communicate the preventable scale of food wasted in the UK through policy research, community and arts led public events. They set up a popup food waste café to host workshops, games and a programme of creative events followed by an evening of theatrical food waste feasts with local artists and musicians, alongside policy and campaign work to reduce UK industry level food waste.

These initiatives cover a wide range of private and public sectors, and emphasise the extent to which collaboration is the key to change. More importantly, we cannot underestimate how much waste we produce as an individual and how much food we could save if all of us stopped wasting food. We should believe in our own power to make a difference even if it is tiny. Let’s all love food and hate waste. Be a conscious consumer and shop smartly. Save your food, save your money and save the environment!

PS: We’ve got a useful link for you which teaches you more about food waste and provides helpful portioning and planning tips, as well as an array of recipes to make sure food doesn’t go to waste. LoveFoodHateWaste

Source: BBC, Love Food Hate Waste and Think Eat Save