‘There is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, and yet, one third of all food produced is lost or wasted –around 1.3 billion tonnes of food –costing the global economy close to $940 billion each year’
Each year, the Aaron Sansoni Foundation collaborates with a charity partner, pledging to fundraise and volunteer for them.
This year, the Aaron Sansoni Foundation is proud to have partnered with OzHarvest, with the ambitious goal of raising $125,000, which will provide quarter of a million meals for Australians in need by the end of 2018.
OzHarvest is Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, collecting quality excess food from commercial outlets and delivering it directly to more than 1000 charities supporting people in need across the country. Founded in 2004 by Ronni Kahn, after noticing the huge volume of good food going to waste from the hospitality industry, she decided there had to be a better way.
OzHarvest now operates nationally, rescuing over 100 tonnes of food each week from over 3,000 food donors including supermarkets, hotels, airports, wholesalers, farmers, corporate events, catering companies, shopping centres, delis, cafes, restaurants, film and TV shoots and boardrooms.
Earlier this year, a team of Aaron Sansoni Foundation supporters took part in OzHarvest’s ‘cooking for a cause’ initiative. OzHarvest chefs got the team busy in the kitchen transforming rescued food into restaurant-quality meals that are then delivered directly to disadvantaged communities. Our supporters were shocked at the amount of rescued food that would otherwise be discarded, and amazed at how creative the OzHarvest chefs were in using all the food – for example, the pumpkins seeds from the pumpkin were kept, roasted, and used in a salad!
We were all stunned to learn the facts about food waste in Australia:
https://www.ozharvest.org/what-we-do/environment-facts/
- Nearly three million people are living in poverty, one quarter are children
- Over 644,000 people now receive food relief each month, one third are children
- The Government estimates food waste costs the Australian economy $20 billion each year
- 4 million tonnes of food ends up as landfill, enough to fill 8,400 Olympic sized swimming pools
- One in five shopping bags end up in the bin = $3,800 worth of groceries per household each year
- 35% of the average household bin is food waste
Fighting food waste isn’t hard, it’s about learning new habits when it comes to our relationship with food. OzHarvest suggest we look, buy, store, cook:
Look:
- Look at what food you already have before you go shopping
- Check use by and best before dates, and know the difference
- Plan your meals
Buy:
- Buy only what you need
- Shop with a list
- Avoid the deals like ‘buy one get one free’
Store:
- Store food in airtight containers
- Keep fruit and veg in the fridge
- Freeze food near its use-by date
Cook:
- Cook with what you have
- Use ingredients up
- Love your leftovers