There are cafés popping up in the UK and all over the world serving accessible, healthy meals made entirely from diverted food waste! These cafés, run by the incredible Real Junk Food Project in the UK, are run on a Pay As You Feel basis and provide an important source of healthy food for low income residents in the area.
Check out their website:
http://therealjunkfoodproject.org/
And their Facebook site:
A creative UK organization (The Real Junk Food Project) is piloting a school breakfast program run entirely off of diverted food waste!
“Through our work with Richmond Hill Primary School we have seen how important an initiative like Fuel for School is, not just to stop hunger and kickstart learning, but also as an amazingly powerful tool to educate the next generation about food waste and the environment, in the hope that they can help stop such criminal amounts of waste and hunger in the future.
-Kerry Murphy, The Real Junk Food Project’s Education Co-ordinator
Video:
Between 25-40% of perfectly safe and perfectly edible produce is rejected by western supermarkets. Can you guess why? Purely cosmetic reasons! Cucumbers that are too curved or bananas that are too straight can’t be sold in most supermarkets. In the UK, it was even illegal to sell carrots that are forked (with a secondary branch). There’s a LOT of waste behind our perfectly uniform supermarket produce aisle!
Here’s what one French grocery chain is doing about it:
Could we get something similar happening in Canada?
Most of us throw our groceries (especially produce) in the fridge without thinking twice. After all, the fridge is the best way to keep foods fresh and safe, right? Wrong…
Check out how this inventive artist found new ways of storing produce to increase shelf life and reduce wasted food:
What if someone told you to take $2,200 in cash and flush it down the toilet…or better yet, chop it up, boil it, and then throw it out in your green bin? And then to do that again once a year, every year. Would you do it? Probably not – it seems crazy. It seems wasteful. The crazy thing is actually that $2,200 is how much the average American family of four loses in wasted food each year, according to American Wasteland author Jonathan Bloom. Waste adds up!
See Bloom’s tips for reducing household food waste here:
http://www.culinate.com/articles/culinate8/jonathan_bloom_personal_food_waste
Composting
The food waste conversation is gaining attention! Take a look at this trailer for a recent documentary about a couple who decides to quit grocery shopping and survive only on food “waste”. See what they learn about waste in the food industry along the way.
See the website for more info:
There has been discussion recently of the EU banning “best-before” labels on shelf-stable products like rice, pasta, coffee, and canned goods. Such products, which are safe to eat well passed their ‘best-before’ date, are causing “unnecessary food waste” and contributing to the roughly 89 million tonnes of food losses annually in Europe. Another concern is that confusion over the meaning of ‘best-before’ labels encourages consumers to overzealously throw food away over safety concerns.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-tackles-massive-food-waste-151359858.html
Guelph Food Waste Research Project 