Hello fellow food savers,
Daniel from Foodsharing Luxembourg is writing. You may remember my previous post Call for participation: workshop @ European Youth Event 2020. Due to the pandemic, the European Youth Event (EYE) has been postponed to the 8th and 9th of October this year.
Our group’s application of holding a workshop about food waste at the EYE 2021 has been accepted again, and we have some places for people between 16 and 30 years old left. Accommodation and transport will be paid for. Find more details and the sign up form here: European Youth Event 2021
Best greetings,
Daniel
1 post - 1 participant
]]>1 post - 1 participant
]]>Hello fellow food savers,
Daniel from Foodsharing Luxembourg is writing. Our group’s application of holding a workshop about food waste at the European Youth Event 2020 has been accepted, and we need you! 
The European Youth Event (EYE) is a bi-annual event for youth taking place in Strasbourg, France; The next EYE will be from the 29th to the 30th of May 2020.
Our workshop has the title “United Against Food Waste: Making sure food lands in people’s stomachs” and comes with the following teaser:
Worldwide one third of the food produced is thrown away. In the EU, 173 kg of food per person per year are wasted. Consequently, resources having been used for the production of that food, including land, energy and water, have been lost. The IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land from 2019 notes that food waste and loss were responsible for about 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions during 2010–2016, which means that food waste is a major driver of the climate crisis. As the EU has recently agreed on reaching climate neutrality by 2050, it is a good moment to come up with concrete political demands to tackle the issue of food waste. Which best-practices do exist already? What should governments do? Be part of working out clear political demands to tackle the issue of food waste at its root.
As this workshop will take only 90 minutes, we need efficient and strict facilitation. Our idea has been to split up participants in 5 groups to work on different topics. Therefore, we have also indicated that 5 facilitators will show up. This is why we need you now!
Our idea is to be there with an international facilitation team, not only to hold the workshop but also to show the diversity in our movement and to network. Your travel costs and one night in Strasbourg will be paid by the EU. You can only participate if you are between 16 and 30 years old.
If you are interested, send us an e-mail to moien [at] foodsharing.lu with a short description of yourself and your local group. This is not binding yet! The next step will be a call with further information in January.
Enjoy the rest of the year!
Best greetings,
Daniel
2 posts - 2 participants
]]>Like every year for five years now there will be an international foodsharing festival in Germany.
So far it was mostly called ‘international’ because it also had foodsavers from Austria and Switzerland. Last year a handful of Polish foodsavers visited as well. But this year we want to host a real international meetup and we want you to take part!
Here’s what the festival is about:
One third of all food produced is thrown away every year even though a big part of it is still edible. At the same time there’s a billion people starving worldwide.
The foodsharing festival is meant to raise awareness for the issue of food waste and encourage everybody to do their part as well - because it matters.This year we chose the slogan ‘Living change’ for the foodsharing festival. We will meet again at Malzfabrik in Berlin and look into changed consumer habits and alternatives together.
From August 16 to 18 there will be around 600 people meeting every day to engage in workshops, seminars cooking sessions, info stands, music, yoga and much more - all in the name of living change, fighting food waste and making the world a better place for everybody, and all free of charge.
The team that has been working tirelessly for months to make the festival happen consists of volunteers only and all the money needed for an event at this scale was donated.
We invite whoever is interested to come by and take part, be it a foodsharing veteran or complete newbie! All visitors get the chance to exchange ideas, network between each other and spend an amazing weekend together. Everybody is welcome!
There is already some interest from Italian and Spanish groups and we will have an international meetup on that festival. It will probably take place on Saturday August 17 and give us the chance to meet as many international foodsavers as possible!
I will host this event and this is what I wrote for the program:
Some words about me:
- I have been working on spreading the idea of foodsharing internationally for three years now, be it by writing emails, compiling websites or traveling and making personal connections. I live in Kanthaus, close to Leipzig with many other people who are putting all of their energy into preventing waste and promoting sharing. Find out more about foodsaving worldwide and Kanthaus online: https://foodsaving.world and https://kanthaus.online
This is the idea of my workshop:
- I want to give an overview of the diversity of foodsharing groups in Germany and beyond - governance structures, communication patterns and regular activities can differ quite a lot. Then we will collect and discuss common problems that can be found in basically every foodsharing group and the different ideas of how to resolve them. There will be time to exchange ideas and compare experiences to strengthen the bonds between the different nodes in the worldwide foodsaving network.
This workshop is meant for foodsavers who are 1) part of or acquainted to a group that is not German-speaking, 2) wanting to help us spread foodsharing to more places, or 3) interested in the international situation.My perception of this year’s slogan ‘living change’:
- Living change means to stop compromising. It means to get active, to join a group or, if necessary, become a pioneer who inspires others to recognize (and maybe even embrace) the alternative lifestyle that is needed for sustainable change. It means to stop making excuses and to start behaving in a way that makes it possible for future generations to live on this planet after us.
I’d love to see all of you there, but I know that this is quite unlikely… 
Still, I hope that this event is interesting to you and that some of you can actually make it. Unfortunately we cannot compensate for travel costs, but as soon as you arrived you will have no further expenses since the festival itself and the food there is completely free of charge for all attendees! If you want to camp on the festival grounds it’s 10€ per person for the weekend, but you can also try to find accommodation via couchsurfing, trustroots, bewelcome or personal contacts - I’d happily try and help with that!
1 post - 1 participant
]]>From January 1st, 2019
Original article can be found here.
News from foodsharing Taiwan!
TL;DR:
- there are 10 public fridges now
- one long-term cooperating store
- more and more public interest
- the German who started it wants to take a step back and see others take more responsibility
- Taiwanese mentality makes it sometimes hard to find volunteers and partners
1 post - 1 participant
]]>From October 18, 2018
Click here to read the article on foodsaving.today!
Read the summary of the meetings I and @tiltec had during our bike trip in September.
3 posts - 3 participants
]]>From September 26, 2018
Original article in Russian can be found here.
(Machine-translated with google translate and then manually smoothened)
Foodsharing is gaining popularity in Moscow
by Maria Belenkaya
Photos Ivan EroFeev (click the link on top to see them)
Residents of the city save food from being wasted
The organizer of the Moscow foodsharing movement Anna Uspenskaya tells what to do with surplus products to help the family budget, poor people and the whole planet.
Start with yourself
It often happens that the food we do not have time to eat ends up in the trash. According to Anna, the step “number zero” is freezing or processing: “You can cook a dish that will be stored for a few more days if it’s vegetables that need to be cut or meat.”
Give to neighbors
“The next thing is to think whether it is possible to give to relatives or neighbors,” Anna continues.
Find out who needs free food, maybe there is a concierge or a senior at your home. Neighbors are often given fruits and vegetables, sometimes even ready meals.
Explain your angle
“First it will be surprising, but it’s worth to tell why the food is left over and you want to give it away,” Anna adds. “For example, if you had a large harvest of courgettes or pumpkins in your garden which can’t possibly eat all by yourself.” In the end, you will find someone who will be grateful for food.
Post in social networks
In “VKontakte” there are groups called “Foodsharing. I’ll give food for free” for different cities, including for Moscow and the region. There they offer pieces of pies, a cut watermelon, tea …
“There you can write an announcement, and pretty quickly someone who needs your food, will take it,” - says Anna.
Volunteer
If you want to save more than your own food from being wasted, welcome to the foodsharing movement, which saves prepared food from organizations. Volunteers go there, pick up the food and can take a part for themselves, but the rest must be distributed to others.
Thinking about others
Everyone who independently distributes food and assists the movement must take care of its safety. Here Anna has one piece of advice: “If you ate it yourself, but for some reason you do not have time to finish it, then you can share it.” If you do not want to eat, because it’s spoiled, you should not share it either. "
How Foodsharing works in Moscow
For more than three years the organized foodsharing movement had been going on in the capital. In order to reduce the amount of good food that is found in landfills, volunteers take the decommissioned products from cafes, bakeries, canteens and private, non-chain stores.
According to Anna Uspenskaya, such enterprises want their products to be sent to people in need. Therefore, the food saved by volunteers is transferred to non-profit organizations that care for large families, single mothers and single pensioners. In addition, products from foodsharing are used in dinners for people in need, including homeless people.
If you want to become a volunteer, you need to understand that this is can be quite some effort. Soups, for example, should be taken in large quantities which means pots up to five liters. Even volunteers without cars sometimes have to carry and distribute 10-12 kg of products. “It’s a job,” says Anna, “it’s not just coming and taking food for yourself.”
More about foodsharing Moscow can be read in this post from Anna Uspenskaya on foodsaving.today.
1 post - 1 participant
]]>From July 6, 2018
Original article in Italian can be found here.
(Machine-translated version made with deepl)
FROM CONSUMPTION TO THE COMMUNITY: THE HISTORY OF RECUP
[by Marta Facchini and Roberta Covelli]
Exchange, collaboration, conscious consumption: the project Recup, reducing food waste, recovers unsold food and social relations in Milan markets
Synopsis
From Viale Papiniano to Lambrate, Recup is active in various Milanese markets, an association of social promotion committed to combating food waste, through the recovery and redistribution of unsold food. During the closing phase of the market, the volunteers of the association, about thirty divided between the various areas, turn to traders, ask for the surplus as a gift and take it to a collection point, where anyone can take it: in this way, fruit and vegetables that would otherwise be wasted are recovered. It is not only poor people who take advantage of the activity: it is not, the volunteers explain, a social assistance activity, but a collective and collaborative project, which recreates the sense of community, bringing dignity back to food and also to people. Through the collection and redistribution, in fact, the volunteers collaborate, activating a virtuous circle that involves both traders and users most in need. Not only that. In pursuing the objective of reducing food waste to a minimum, the volunteers of Recup simplify waste disposal activities, develop new methods to enhance the value of fruit and vegetables that are still edible and, above all, develop dialogue and social relations in the reality of the market: recovery is therefore not only food, but also relationships.
"Is there something to be recovered? Chiara asks as she passes through the stalls of Viale Papiniano, in the centre of Milan. It’s late afternoon, the market is about to end and the shopkeepers are dismantling their jobs: they clean the tables, close the umbrellas, take away the scales. Some people already load the materials into the car. “Have you sold everything or is there anything left for us?” continues Chiara. Mustafà, who is 20 years old and has been selling fruit and vegetables with a friend for three months, pulls out two crates: inside there are zucchini, tomatoes and asparagus. “Here, take them,” he says. "If they’re too heavy, I’ll take care of them. Chiara raises the boxes off the floor: “It’s better than going to the gym”, she jokes. Then Giulia comes to help her. They stand out from those who walk next to them because they are dressed in the same way: they wear a white short-sleeved T-shirt. Above, an inscription and a logo: Recup. They carry the cassettes to a point in the square, on the corner of Via Olona. There, two ladies collect everything, hold on to what can still be eaten and begin to distribute it. They fill the plastic bags, the shopping trolleys with canvas of those who seem to know them and wait in line. “These vegetables are also good boiled,” says a lady. "Put them in a pot with water and let them go.
The project
This has been the case in Piazzale Sant’Agostino for five years, every Saturday afternoon. It is the idea of the association Recup: to go to the market, talk to the sellers and recover what no one has bought during the day and that otherwise would end up in the trash. Then you separate the still good food from the rest, which you throw away. And anyone who needs it, or likes it, can take it and take it home.
“We realized that there were traders who bought in the marketplace large quantities of food to be able to get affordable prices but ended up wasting it. And maybe in the same market you could see people rummaging through trash bags,” says Virginia, a 31-year-old biologist, one of the founders of Recup and vice-president of the association. Today she is also working, she has just downloaded a box of onions and rocket. "At first it wasn’t easy, but we won the trust of the sellers. Now that they know us, it happens that they are the ones who bring us the unsold product. We even managed to recover 200 kg in one day. Over the years the project has grown: it started from Viale Papiniano and now covers ten markets in almost all of Milan. “We work with the municipality in policies to combat waste and we are about to open a new project with the Amsa”, explains Virginia. "We are able to facilitate the work of the garbage trucks. We collect everything in one place in the square and it’s easier for them to collect.
At Recup we work as volunteers and so far there are about thirty of them: high school students, university students, scouts and even pensioners participate. We organize ourselves in groups: each market is followed by a nucleus of people and has a contact person. And it’s not uncommon for someone who has taken something to help to come back. Like Claudio, who met the boys of the association in the worst years of the economic crisis, when he had lost his carpenter’s job and slept in the car. He couldn’t do the shopping and with Recup he would get something to eat. Now that the situation has changed, he has found a home and a job, he has returned to help: “I do not like to come just to take. Then I take a walk through the market stalls and I take the boxes,” he explains. "Today I found the vegetables my partner likes. I’ll surprise her: I’ll cook.
Maria, on the other hand, is behind a counter and cleans the asparagus. He keeps a bunch of them for himself but spends the afternoon filling the envelopes of those who approach him. It seems like an act of healing to him. He has been with Recup since the beginning and now knows almost all the people in front of him: “not only those who live in the area come. That lady lives far away, she doesn’t live here. And yet she arrives on time because this has now become a fixed date,” he says.
Beyond numbers, relationships
At the Lambrate market, small coloured cans are placed on a table. They contain colours created by boiling vegetables and blending them: green from herbs and spinach, red from onion peels and beets. “We have started to organize workshops in schools. We teach how to work with waste materials,” says Federica, who attended the Academy of Fine Arts and is the group’s creative director. She met Recup when she was twenty-two years old and now she is in charge of maintaining relations with schools. “It’s an enriching experience because it’s not welfare. It’s not one-way: it’s based on the reciprocity of relationships,” she says. Chiara also thinks so, as she met the association by chance and then came back together with her husband to join as a volunteer. “We recover relationships and we end up getting to know each other because we talk and look into each other’s eyes,” she says. "It’s not just a question of figures.
Figures that, according to the latest surveys, are improving. According to data from the Reduce project - coordinated by the University of Bologna, promoted by the Ministry of the Environment in collaboration with the Zero Waste campaign and presented on the occasion of the fifth National Day for the Prevention of Food Waste - every year the average family throws away 84.9 kilograms of food and, at national level, the bill rises to 2.2 million tons. Almost a pound and a half a day, each. Yet a decrease, given that in 2016 it was estimated a waste of 145 kg per household and 63 kg per person.
The circle that comes to an end
“One of the first times I went around the counters, they gave me twenty cases of peppers. It was Papiniano’s square,” says Rebecca. Recup was born from an idea of hers, arrived when she was twenty-five years old and after the Erasmus in Lille. In France she went shopping at the market and saw how the associations worked with waste materials. Back in Milan, and after a degree in Geography, she decided to do the same in the city. That’s how she met Virginia and Federica. At the base, an idea shared by all: “We are not a charity”, she explains. “We recover in respect of food and others. Whoever takes it, must not take away more than what they would use or there would be waste even in that case”.
Then other people arrived and the circle widened. “We thought of new projects: jams, the creation of colors, workshops at school,” she continues. "And we also have new tools: before everything was loaded by hand and now, thanks to a call from the municipality, Recup has obtained a cargobike to carry the weights.
Returning to the market also meant returning to the centre of a community. Because in line to buy a bunch of vegetables you talk, you know each other. “Many people ask me to go to supermarkets or restaurants as well. But it’s the local markets that allow you to rediscover the care for the other”. In the neighborhood the dialogue is reconstructed and the market becomes a point of aggregation and opening. A social square. “Recup wants to reduce waste to a minimum, trying to reach zero. And to give food back its social and meeting value. It is a circle that closes”.
Translated with DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator
1 post - 1 participant
]]>Hey all!
It took me quite a while, but finally the new – and much fancier – info page is published on foodsaving.world! 
The content did not completely change, but the layout is better, the technology in the background much simpler, and if you have a good look you’ll definitely find some differences. (Do you like the new favicon? )
I’d love you to head over and check it out, and if you do, please tell me about any typos, inconsistencies and possible improvements you can think of, okay? Any feedback is much appreciated! 
to you all,
Janina
1 post - 1 participant
]]>A few things about Foodsharing in Östersund (sweden), how I started and what kind of challenges, ideas and projects we had so far. I’ll start and try to get some information together.
I started in Feburary to share the idea of Foodsharing with people i knew, created a facebook group and held 2 meetings to inform people (only 4-6 ppl showed up). I also made a “logo” for Foodsharing Östersund (FSosd)
At the moment i am mainly the person who plans, organises and has an overview. But this is slowly changing and developing. (i am from germany and only in Östersund for 1 year to study there, I do not speak swedish well and as I am leaving in January 2019, I am looking to make FSosd independent from me :D)
At the moment we have two running regular cooperations in Östersund.
One with a bakery (3x a week) and one with a supermarket “ICA” (3x a week)
communication
We communicate via 2 facebook groups, one for everybody and one for people who are interested in doing some more organising. Also we use Telegram for last minute communication and karrot, as it has a chat function now, yay!!
managing pick-ups
From the beginning, all pick ups were only available via www.karrot.world. This is a good way to have an overview on how many people are actually active. Also it is a much better way of communication than Facebook.
Problems
as the connection with people is mainly via internet (other than for example in germany where you need to go to a meeting before you can do pick ups officially) it is quite hard to convey the principles of foodsharing and to create a feeling of responisibility in the individual foodsavers. At the moment people more often just don’t show up to a pick up.
We don’t have any rules about what happens if somebody does not show up, as we also do not have a hirachy really. I wonder how we can make this a little better, without creating a penalty system. or is it neccessary? 
cooperation with other initiatives
A very big help for us is, that some initiatives cooperate with FSosd and support us. SMICE and Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan (SV) are our main partners. FSosd is a “study circle” at SV and they print posters and flyers for us. Also FSosd can be found on both websites.
Also we are in connection with PUSHsverige (an initiative for young people that supports sustainabke activism) and with a few others.
Promotion
We had some events to promote Foodsharing:
-a brunch
-we showed the movie “just eat it” (in a community cinema, the screening licence was donated by the producers after asking for it nicely)
-a sharing station at a one day festival in town (we managed to get 4 “one time cooperations” just for this event)
-I hold presentations on markets, events and whereever i can, through the cooperations with initiatives I get invited quite reguarly now
-a radio report about Foodsharing Östersund in swedish
Plans and Ideas
- a website for FSosd
- making FSosd a “förening” (official initiative, or in german: “e.V.”) ?? Pros and Cons?
- getting more people on board to share the responsibilities
- having regular meetings?
5 posts - 3 participants
]]>Partly Swedish, partly English.
1 post - 1 participant
]]>On every other day, the sight of 20 000 kilograms of food, enough to fill a huge shipping container, would cause sadness and shock. On the 28th of April, though, it got tens of thousands of people all over the world to celebrate, dance and eat together!
1 post - 1 participant
]]>1 post - 1 participant
]]>There is such a thing as a free lunch – a sustainable student initiative
UM, June 18 2018
Free food may sound too good to be true but it may well be one of the most ethical options on the menu. Foodsharing Maastricht is a student initiative that collects leftover food from local supermarkets and hotels. The food can then be picked up by any comers in Building X, Tapijnkazerne.
1 post - 1 participant
]]>What is happening with regards to foodsaving worldwide? English language articles and discussions can be found here.
This category is for:
- Links to news articles
- Announcements
- Discussion about recent developments
1 post - 1 participant
]]>