Globally, roughly 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year ends up in waste.
Each year, on April 22nd, International Earth Day is observed. As it approaches this makes me reflect on Fresho’s mission to reduce food waste, and the enormity of this issue worldwide. This is why this year’s recognition of Earth day needs to be the loudest.
On a global scale, roughly one-third of the food that is grown, caught, and manufactured ends up in waste – and more often than not, in our landfills. That equates to 1.3 billion tonnes in the food industry alone each year. Not only does it have a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions; but wasting food also means all the resources used to produce and transport that food, including water, land, energy, labour, and capital, have gone to waste.
To go even further than this, nearly 10% of our global population are undernourished, with not enough food to feed themselves or their families. Yet, we’re wasting all of this perfectly good food?
Lucky for us, there are some charities solely dedicated to tackling both of these issues all in one. KiwiHarvest and UKHarvest are food rescue organisations that work with supermarkets, restaurants, cafes, and food suppliers to redistribute surplus food that would otherwise be going to waste, to help feed communities in need.
Collectively, these two organisations alone have saved over 9,000 tonnes of food from going to landfills, redistributing the food to over 600 charities across both New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Charities like these rely heavily on both food donations and volunteers, and as I am sure you can imagine, have been hit particularly hard in the wake of the pandemic. Despite these challenges, both Kiwi and UKHarvest have committed to staying open throughout all covid alert levels to ensure our most vulnerable communities have access to food during these challenging times.
Now, more than ever, we need to do what we can to help.
At Fresho, mitigating the impact of food waste and food security is a cause that’s close to our hearts. Our online ordering and order management software helps significantly reduce the errors in the ordering process that often result in waste. We have an extensive database of venues and food suppliers who use our platform, so working together with our customers, we help these charities make a positive impact by promoting the Harvests to our users and giving them the resources they need in order to become food donors, to help them get as many new regular donations as possible.
You can help too – here are some ideas of how you can show your support:
- Volunteer your time to a local charity, putting your skills to good use
- Donate food to a local food bank – there is always a demand for this
- If you’re in a position to, donate money to help keep these not for profits doing their amazing work
At Fresho, we’re extremely proud of the impact UKHarvest & KiwiHarvest make, and are happy to be able to continue to support them through our work.
Are you interested in donating surplus food? Get in touch with alex@fresho.com to learn more, and do your bit for the planet this Earth Day.
