For the third year running, Australia’s leading food rescue organisation OzHarvest has partnered with the United Nations to tackle food waste and food security at Think.Eat.Save events across the country.
At Perth’s inaugural Think.Eat.Save event held on Monday 27th July, Josh Byrne teamed up with chef Clint Nolan, OzHarvest staff and an amazing bunch of volunteers to serve a free hot lunch made from ‘rescued ingredients’ to the public in Forrest place. Organisers were thrilled to exceed their target of handing out 1,000 free soups, 350 delicious cupcakes and a drum of compost (not to be eaten of course!).
The national Think.Eat.Save events are part of a global campaign in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN’s Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Save Food Initiative global initiative on food loss and waste reduction. The campaign calls on the nation’s top political leaders to set a target to reduce food waste by 50 per cent by 2025.
Founder and CEO of OzHarvest, Ronni Kahn, said the aim of Think.Eat.Save 2015 is to continue to bring attention to the alarming amount of food wasted in Australia and around the world, where roughly one third of food produced for human consumption (approx. 1.3 billion tonnes) is wasted or lost along the way.1
“Australia needs to lead on this global mission to combat food waste and make our food system more sustainable. I encourage all businesses, food industry, schools, all levels of government and the Australian public to join in this movement and make a pledge to reduce food waste.”
Toolkits are available on the OzHarvest Website for businesses and schools to take action and get involved in the Think.Eat.Save campaign.
1FAO, 2011, Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention, Rome. Food loss (FL): The decrease in quantity or quality of food. FL is mainly caused by the functioning of the food production and supply system or its institutional and legal framework. An important part of food loss is called food waste (FW) which refers to the removal from the supply chain of food which is fit for consumption by choice or has been left to spoil or expire as a result of negligence – predominantly but not exclusively the final consumer at household level. Source: FAO 2014.