Press contact: Gil Op de Beeck, FoodWIN, 0478 22 53 03
FoodWIN is very proud to announce the winners of the Food Waste Awards 2020. Although the live award ceremony had to be suspended, the winners much deserve their place in the spotlight! Put your hands together for the following winning initiatives:
CATEGORY CHANGEMAKERS:
Buurtfruit (“Fruit in the neighbourhood”) in Ghent
Velt, the volunteers of Pluk and the City of Ghent jointly developed a digital map with public and semi-public locations where local residents can pick fruit in Ghent.
Tine Heyse, alderman of Environment and Climate in Ghent, complements: “Buurtfruit is a good example of how we work with citizens to prevent food waste. This is good for the climate, gives local residents access to delicious fresh fruit and creates opportunities to meet each other. This is how we really work together towards a more sustainable food system. So it’s fantastic that this project is now recognised with a Food Waste Award.”
Carina Govaert of Velt continues: “Edible greenery connects people in the city and facilitates sudden encounters with neighbours. This is no longer obvious in times of a pandemic, hence, we are all the more aware of its importance. We hope to inspire many more cities and municipalities with this initiative!”
CATEGORY CANTEENS: School canteen of Go! Atheneum De Tandem in Eeklo
‘Go! Atheneum De Tandem’ in Eeklo managed to save 1800 kg of food from the bin every year!
Frederik Lapeirre of Natuurpunt Meetjesland explains: “Throughout a whole week of school in February, the pupils divided the food leftovers and unused food into categories and weighed these separately. You can only imagine this was quite a job!”
Based on the results of that measurement, the school decided to switch to another supplier. In order to be able to evaluate the impact of this action, at the request of the pupils themselves, a new measurement of food loss was carried out in November. The impact measurement clearly shows less food waste than the baseline measurement. Less food was prepared and food losses decreased from 42% to 29%.
This success was part of a program by FoodWIN, Goodplanet and ‘Natuurpunt and partners Meetjesland’, who supported a number of secondary schools in the Meetjesland in their fight against food waste with a food waste trajectory.
CATEGORY MULTI-SECTORAL COLLABORATION
Croquettes of chicory by Cools & Gastronello
Did you know that around 30% of the chicory harvest is normally lost due to abnormal shape, size or soiled outer blisters?
Gastronello, a food processing company and chicory producer Cools are changing that loss into an opportunity.
“By processing the majority of this waste stream into chicory croquettes, the loss is limited to only 5%!” says Thomas Cools. These are promising figures, given that around 4,000 tonnes of Brussels chicory are produced every year around Brussels.
This processing method also offers the potential to convert other residual flows of vegetables into profitable products. Under the motto of less waste and more taste, this innovative collaboration rightly deserves the Food Waste Award for cross-sector initiatives.
The recipe for success
Gil Op de Beeck of FoodWIN vzw is very happy with the results. “We notice all the more that collaborations across different sectors of the food chain are particularly impactful. With this in mind, in December we will organise the Food Waste Fest 2,020 together with the Food Losses Chain Platform (Flemish Government) and Interreg Food Heroes. As a player in the food chain, this is the perfect opportunity to learn about and show what you’re worth in the fight against food waste”. For more information, please visit www.foodwastefest.com.