Irish households and cafes are dumping food at a rate of more than 100kg per person every year in careless practices that are adding to an international food waste crisis.
A UN report found 17pc of all food produced worldwide goes uneaten – twice as much as previously thought.
That means pointless use of energy and other resources in growing, processing, packaging, chilling, transportation and disposal.
The squandered energy is responsible for up to 10pc of global greenhouse gas emissions and it increases food costs, making matters worse for billions of people who go hungry or exist on inadequate diets every year.
Image source: Food Cloud
Irish social enterprise FoodCloud has redistributed the equivalent of 100 million meals to its network of community group and charity partners across Ireland and the UK since 2013.
That is the equivalent of 20 meals per person in Ireland.
2020 has been an extraordinary year for many, including the enterprise, who experienced “extreme peaks and troughs in the supply of food, limited volunteers and restrictive Covid-19 work practices”.
Impact of the pandemic
FoodCloud works with retail and food businesses across the supply chain to help them redistribute their surplus food to its network of more than 9,500 charities and community groups across Ireland and internationally.
elaine@TheCork.ie
Iseult Ward (left) from Food Cloud is well known for arranging the transfer of unused factory/shop foods to needy causes, but you can do your part in your own home, here is how:
This Christmas/New Year’s period reduce your food waste with Catherine Fulvio’s Seven Secrets to Stop Festive Food Waste. Shockingly we will throw out millions of euro worth of food over Christmas week. Cork County Council has joined seven other local authorities to link up with Catherine Fulvio to explore how we can avoid food waste.
Food waste hits all of us in the pocket, with the average family throwing out €700 worth of food per annum. Christmas is when we throw out the most in quantity but also when we see some very expensive foods make their way to the brown bin. Turkey, ham, stuffing, sauces, salmon, canapes, cheeses, desserts are some of the high-cost items commonly found in bins during the season.
A homeless charity has warned there will be further deaths of rough sleepers on the streets of Dublin over Christmas if the Government does not intervene.
Chief executive of Dublin based charity, Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH), Anthony Flynn criticised the Government’s response to the homeless crisis, saying Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien needed to take responsibility for rough sleepers dying on his watch.
The bodies of two men, both aged in their 40s, were found on the streets in Dublin city centre in November.
They were found within hours of one another.
One of the men was discovered in a tent on Leinster Lane off Nassau Street, while the other man was found dead at a house on Longford Street off Aungier Street.
“We have reached out to the Minister.
“We’re in constant contact with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) through the Lord Mayor’s forum that was set up a number of months ago to address the issue of homelessness in Dublin.”
“We’re spending a hell of a lot of money, and we’re not getting the results that we need in terms of outcomes and exits within homeless services, and we can pat each other on the back as much as we want to about how much has been done but there’s still an awful lot to be done.