I’ve been reading a lot about food waste recently.
It’s one of the biggest environmental threats facing our planet at the moment, with overflowing landfills releasing tonnes of methane as perfectly good edibles are discarded and left to decompose. Ronni Kahn is the founder of OzHarvest, and her recently released autobiography is both a wonderful read and an eye-opener. Did you know that the average Australian household throws away $3,800 of groceries per year (one in every five bags)? Almost half the fruit and veg produced are wasted, yet one in nine people, nearly 800 million of them, don’t have enough to eat…
As a family, we’re trying to do our little bit. We’ve been making a concerted effort to finish our leftovers, and all our leavings and other food waste is, as much as possible, fed to our backyard menagerie of chickens, worms and soldier fly larvae. I’ll try to write a separate post on what we’ve found works and doesn’t work, but until our council is able to offer us food waste collection, we’ll continue to process as much of it as we can here to keep it out of landfill.
These soldier fly larvae are an integral part of our backyard food recycling system!
After watching David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet, both Pete and Small Man declared that we needed to eat less animal products (not easy for a house of meat lovers, but we’re determined to try). Last week, instead of our usual chicken curry, we made this vegan version instead and it was delicious…
In keeping with our goal of reducing food waste, we picked up some of the vegetables for the curry from the AddiRoad Food Pantry. You might recall that I’ve written about them before, and that we recently made and donated over 150 masks to them…
Now, I’ve always been hesitant to shop there, believing that if I could afford to pay retail prices, then I shouldn’t compete with those that couldn’t. But when we dropped off our last batch of masks, Food Pantry Manager Damien encouraged us to do so. He explained that their main goal was preventing food waste, and also that when customers paid the asking place, it put them in a better position to give food vouchers to those in need.
The shop is set up on a points system, with each point charged at 50c. All items have a number written on them indicating how many points they’re worth. If you spend $5, you also get a free loaf of day old bread, one or two frozen dinners, and a bag of rescued fruit and veg which might otherwise have gone to landfill. Everything will be past its best before date, but still perfectly fine to eat, and by purchasing from them, you’ll be supporting their ongoing efforts to fight food waste.
Here are some photos I took of the shop…
And here’s what we picked up on our first visit…
If you still have qualms about taking food away from those who might need it more, then try my approach.
I go to the pantry just before it closes, so as to not compete with anyone who needs access to the service more than I do. Then I add $10 to my purchase price as a donation. It’s a win all around: I pay less, I help fight food waste, I don’t take away from anyone else, and I’ve donated enough to provide a box of food to a family in need.
Of course, if you’re not in the area and can’t shop there in person, you can still support AddiRoad by donating directly through their website. The organisation’s hashtag is #WeAreStrongerTogether, and I really do think that says it all! ♥
