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ACTION PLAN against FOOD WASTE [beta version] Cocreated at the Food Waste Collab in ParisViennaBrusselsAmsterdamBerlin The European Food Waste Collab events (Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Berlin and Amsterdam) gathered actors who use food surplus or reduce food waste to steer more collaboration in the fight against food waste both locally and internationally. Together they wrote an action plan to reduce food waste. This is a betaversion, which shall be spread and reviewed extensively especially through your input! You can help cocreate the Action Plan by contributing on this Google Doc: Share best practices for the existing recommendations, come up with your own themes that are not yet covered, suggest concrete actions of collaboration or add any other inspiration/idea that you might have. You can do so by commenting the suggestions will be integrated regularly. If you would like to be more involved (for example by hosting a foodwastecollab in your city), please contact us. This is an initiative of the Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network. We reduce food waste by supporting food surplus entrepreneurs to increase their impact and by spreading their innovations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS I. General II. Transport of food surplus III. Mobilizing volunteers and building lasting communities IV. Low cost scaling through collaborative networks V. Sustain your business whilst encouraging replication VI. Activate and inspire consumers VII. Future plans: European Food Waste Collab VIII. Links to initiatives I.
GENERAL
CREATE WINWINS Bring local actors (related to food or not) around the table to tackle food waste. Map the streams of food surplus. Map activities, strengths, spare capacity and needs of each player. Create winwins to reduce food waste. BEST PRACTICES: The city of Ghent (Belgium) – link in Dutch – brought together a wide variety of stakeholders to develop a strategy for more sustainable food. The city supports initiatives working on food waste and tries to connect supermarkets, social restaurants and other actors.
II.
TRANSPORTATION OF FOOD SURPLUS
SHARE GREEN TRANSPORTATION Look for a green transport provider. Set up a partnership to share the vehicle. Foot > bike > public transport > renewable energy > fossil fuels. BEST PRACTICES: To transport the food surplus and materials, Disco Soupe Belgium will collaborate with a cargo bike delivery company to use the bikes when the company doesn’t need them.
III.
MOBILIZING VOLUNTEERS & BUILDING LASTING COMMUNITIES
BE MISSION DRIVEN Create an inspiring mission. Make sure this mission is reflected in your activities and use it to communicate and market yourself. Be really concrete in what you want to achieve. Best Practice: The Real Junk Food Project (UK) puts ideals first. Because of their empowering story, they can work 100% with volunteers and their concept is spreading over Europe. USE ROLE MODELS Rolemodels are a very effective strategy to mobilizing volunteers. Someone in the organization that lives the vision/mission thoroughly serves as a motivation /inspiration for the community Best practices: Raphael Fellmer from foodsharing.de fully embraces the ‘sharing economy’ philosophy of the organization: he has lived without money for the past five years. PERSONALIZE RELATIONSHIPS IN YOUR COMMUNITY Try to combine your regular meetings with informal gatherings, deconstructing boundaries and creating personal relationships outside of the cause of your organization. Dragon Dreaming workshops are a useful tool to create a feeling of ownership for volunteers. Best practices:Lebensmittelretten.de DON’T OVERFORMALIZE YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE Whilst keeping a minimum of structure, beware not to overformalize your organization and keep on showing appreciation to maintain a positive spirit within the community.
IV.
LOWCOST SCALING THROUGH COLLABORATIVE NETWORKS
COLLABORATE WITH OTHER ACTIVISTS Exchange your expertise and support eachother as a food waste activist community. After all, food surplus pioneers go through similar challenges. You can also link up with other actors of the Sharing Economy. Best practices: Dörrwerk, needs manpower to produce more and distribute effectively. Currently, they partner with Apfelschätze, a fruitsaving project, which faces the same challenge of not being able to produce and distribute at a larger scale. COLLABORATE WITH OTHER INDUSTRIES
Find ways to exchange resources across the food industry, as well as other industries. They have specialized expertise which you can use. You can form strategic partnerships with them. BEST PRACTICES: BioRampe (Switzerland) collaborates with a major importer of organic food in Switzerland. They deliver their food surplus to restaurants at a lower price.
V. SUSTAIN YOUR BUSINESS WHILST ENCOURAGING REPLICATION RESOURCES & PARTNERSHIPS ARE KEY Keeping the balance between generating enough income/protecting a USP, but still contributing to the growth of the food waste movement can be tricky. FIND FUNDING FOR MARKETING PROJECTS Find funding through crowdfunding or sponsorship to invest into specific projects with high marketing/brand recognition value. For example, publishing a book about your social business or advertising campaigns. AVOID COMPETITION BY STEERING COLLABORATION Create a transition network to transmit your concept to others, while not losing control of it. You will probably have to set up such a network yourself gathering all organizations that use similar business models to fight food waste. USE NONMONETARY RESOURCES Nonmonetary resources are very useful, even if you are not a ‘movement’. Try to create a community around your social business to create solidarity and increase your brandrecognition (involve volunteers). BEST PRACTICE: Kromkommer (Netherlands) created an entire ‘Krommunity’ around their brand. They rely heavily on social media and the input of their followers.
VI.
ACTIVATE & INSPIRE CONSUMERS
TRUST YOUR NOSE Expiry dates often mislead consumers to believe the food is unsafe to eat. Also, a large proportion of vegetables and fruits go bad because of inappropriate storage at home. Schnippeldisko (Germany) organizes collaborative cooking events on a disco beat. By cooking with fruits and vegetables that don’t look good enough to be sold, participants learn to trust their senses.
FRIDGE COOKING Household food waste can be avoided with a simple trick: Fridge cooking. Creating a meal from what you find in your fridge is a creative process which forces you to discover new combinations. Best Practices: What’s Cooking in Berlin base their workshops on conscious consumption and appreciation for food. It teaches participants how to cook delicious, healthy and affordable meals and reuse leftovers in the fridge creatively.This also inspires a more conscious relationship to food. PLAN YOUR GROCERY SHOPPING Heading to the supermarket with a shopping list will save you time and money. And you won’t be seduced to buy excess food. Best Practices: The SAPADU smartphone app encourages users to plan their week ahead by selecting recipes of their choice. Users will then receive customized shopping lists based on what they have at home and the preselected portion sizes. SHARE YOUR LEFTOVERS Going on a spontaneous trip and your fridge is stocked with fresh food? Or you bought something that you later realized just isn’t to your taste? Best Practices: Shareyourmeal.net (Europe and beyond) allows people to share their cooking with people in their neighbourhood. Cook, register the meal and share it with a neighbour. It’s easy and available in 8 languages.
VII.
FUTURE PLANS EUROPEAN FOOD WASTE COLLAB
This first European Food Waste Collab was a pilot, which proved to be a great success. Apart from the regular services of the Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network, there are certain ambitions to the collab itself. Feel free to comment and add to the brainstorm list and see where you would like to get involved to spread this movement. Concrete actions for the near future: Grow the movement Grow the local communities:set up a system of communication for local stakeholders and draft concrete agendas for followup meetings. Grow the international community through the Food Surplus Entrepreneurs Network Grow the content of this action plan: Four European Food Waste Collabs per year Spontaneous food waste collabs throughout the year
Challengesolving workshops online (internationally) and offline (locally) Vision: Having established networks of collaboration in local communities, we intend to connect local networks to eachother and foster dialogue and exchange across borders. By then, we aim to scale the local Food Waste Collabs to include stakeholders across different industries, education, as well as politics.
VIII.
LINKS TO INITIATIVES
Actors mentioned throughout the document ● Biorampe is a food outlet shop. They sell organic food surplus from the largest organic distributor of Switzerland to restaurants. ● Culinary Misfits cook with misshaped vegetables&fruits from local farmers for catering and their cafe. ● Disco Soupe Belgium raises awareness by teaching people to cook with food surplus in public events. ● Dörrwerk produces fruitpaper from leftoverfruit. http://www.doerrwerk.de/ ● Foodsharing (also lebensmittelretten.de). They save food from supermarkets or companies and share it with the community through an onlineplatform. Additionally, they encourage individuals to share leftoverfood through this platform. ● Kromkommer save wonky/ugly vegetables throughout supply chain. They produce soup made of 100% vegetables. ● The Real Junk Food Project (Leeds, UK): Restaurant and food bank running 100% on food waste. ● SAPADU smartphone app will provide users with healthy, seasonal and regional recipes based on the food items that they have stored in the fridge, freezer and/or pantry. ● Schnippeldisko (Germany) organizes collaborative cooking events on a disco beat. ● Shareyourmeal.net (Europe and beyond) is a web platform that allows people to share their cooking with people in their neighbourhood. ● What’s Cooking in Berlin They organize cooking workshops to bring people from different backgrounds together to create healthy, affordable and delicious meals and minimize food waste. They create personalized content on their blog to spread this vision.