Eliminating food waste with a food sharing initiative

Zoomin English

Supermarkets are filled with seasonal food which is thrown away after the holiday period is over, and these Viennese foodsharers don't let it go to waste.

Transcript

00:00There is a study from the Austrian Institute of Ecology from last year, and there were

00:19about 760,000 tons that are thrown away every year.

00:23The Austrian households themselves, there are 157,000 tons.

00:29Of course, it is true that during Christmas, Easter and other holidays, seasonal goods

00:34are put on the shelves, which are then no longer on the shelves afterwards.

00:38So, in this respect, of course, the waste is also increasing.

00:50The strategy is, we talk to companies, like supermarkets, restaurants, and ask if they

00:58would be interested in working with us.

01:08Foodsavering is an initiative that was founded with the aim of reducing food waste.

01:21So, we currently have over 2,000 foodsaver women and foodsavers in Austria and over 400

01:27corporations.

01:40Today it was quite a lot, so we are taking the surplus we have to a fair distributor,

01:46which is a public refrigerator.

01:47I am very happy about the food when I come to the distributor, because even food that

01:58does not look perfect is still valuable and enjoyable.

02:02The biggest problem with food waste these days is that people are simply too little

02:10informed about the minimum shelf life date, which is not the consumption date.

02:16These are two different terms, with different meanings, of course.

02:22I personally like the best about foodsharing that everyone can participate, no matter who

02:28you are, whether old or young, poor or rich, where you come from, who you eat, everyone

02:35can be part of it and save food.

02:37We are now here at the booth of foodsharing, which is once a month, and we can see that

02:44there is really something going on with the food, so if you look at it, we sell it together,

02:50we share food with each other, it is an exchange of ideas for recipes or something like that.

02:56Working for foodsharing just makes me very happy, because I get to know a lot of people

03:03every day, or not every day, but every time I'm at a pick-up, it's just a lot of fun

03:09to see these foodstuffs and to pass on these foodstuffs and to know that if I wasn't

03:15there, they might have been thrown away.

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