FoodWise is a national campaign that's organised by the action
group Do
Something!. The aim of our campaign is to get Australians to
reduce the environmental impact of their food consumption. In
short, we want people to become FoodWise.
Like most Australians, we love our food. Actually adore is a
better word. We're passionate about it. But we're not so keen on
the amount of food that we throw out. Indeed, our initiative began
after our research found that Australians waste an estimated 4
milion tonnes of food every year.
Initially, the FoodWise campaign focused on getting people to
reduce their food waste. However, our recent research shows that many people
are unaware of the 'paddock to plate' environmental impact of
food. In order to change that situation, we've expanded our
campaign to help people reduce this impact (you can see our full
list of aims here). Simply put, we want Australians to
become more educated and informed about the food that they buy or
grow.
As Kylie
Kwong points out in her FoodWise viewpoint, there seems to be a
real disconnect between the food we buy and the impact that it has
on the environment when we throw it away. People no longer get that
when you throw out food, you're also throwing out all of the
resources, fuel and energy that were used to get that food to your
plate. This lack of knowledge about the wider impact of food, is
one of the reasons why we waste so much of it.
Our campaign partners and content contributors include The Australia Institute, The Food
Safety Information Council, Greenpeace, Growcom, Biological Farmers of
Australia and the major food charities OzHarvest,
Fareshare, Second
Bite and Foodbank. It's a formidable alliance to tackle
a formidable problem.
All too often, we're buying food that is out of season and grown
far away from where we live. Many of us have forgotten how to
compost or grow food at home. We buy processed foods, even though
fresh food is better for us and can save us money. On the issue of
food
safety, many of us lack even the most basic knowledge. And when
it comes to buying, storing, freezing, refrigerating and reusing
our food, we've lost many of the basic skills that our Grandparents
had - skills that helped them to make the very most of the food
that they grew or bought.
The 4 million tonnes of food waste Australians are throwing out
every year is equivalent to 178kg of food waste for each
Australian. We've now reached the point where we are spending $7.8
billion a year on food that we buy but don't eat.
That's a significant proportion of the food we take home. In a
comparable Western economy, the UK, the government's Waste
Resources Action programme (WRAP) estimates that a 1/3 of the food
bought is wasted. Stopping this waste would be the equivalent of
taking 1 in 5 cars off British roads.
Given the cost of today's food, our level of food waste is
clearly not sustainable for the family budget. We're strong
advocates of the need for a simple shopping list.
Going beyond the financial cost of food waste, our wasteful
habits are simply not sustainable for the environment. When food
waste rots in landfill it produces methane, a greenhouse gas that's
25 times more potent than the CO2 pouring out of your car's
exhaust. When we throw away food, we also waste all of the
resources, fuel and energy that were used to get that food from the
paddock to our plate.
That's why this web site is so full of tips and solutions.
Despite the popularity of cooking shows, there is still a poor
understanding among Australians of how to purchase, prepare, store
and freeze food, and how to effectively use our leftovers. Our
FoodWise campaign aims to change that. That's why you'll find a new
recipe
section that will help you to use up your leftover ingredients.
We're also allowing the public to post their own leftover recipes so
that they can share their food knowledge with others.
If you have any ideas on how the campaign can be improved, or
have tips that you think should be on the site, please get in
touch. FoodWise has already become a community of people who love
and celebrate food. We'd very much like for you to join us.
Wasted food is a waste of money. But if we don't mend our
wasteful ways, we'll be eating ourselves out of an environment that
can sustainably support future generations. We simply can't afford
for that to happen. That's why we need you to join our campaign. We
need to make a real difference - we all need to become
FoodWise.
Jon Dee
Founder, Do Something!