Today is Stop Food Waste Day, so Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue T.D. caught up with Inishowen Chef Brian McDermott to learn ways to plan, store and freeze food to prevent waste.
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Minister McConalogue said: “When we think of food waste, we think of the amount of food we put in our waste bins. But we don’t always think of why we are putting it in there. Today let’s take time to think about that question and to understand what food we waste, how much we waste and why we waste it. We can each work towards reducing the amount of food we waste, which will in turn help us reduce our carbon footprint.”
Ireland’s recently published Climate Action Plan aims to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. This aligns with one target of UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 to ‘cut in half per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level and reducing food losses along production and supply chains (including post-harvest losses) by 2030’ and with commitments of Food Vision 2030 on reducing food waste.
The focus of this year’s Stop Food Waste Day ‘Make Use-By Dates Work for You’ is to make people aware that:
- food passing its use-by date is the main reason Irish consumers are wasting food
- people can use or freeze food right up to its use-by date to avoid food waste.
Globally, food wastage’s carbon footprint is estimated at 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent of Green House Gas emissions released into the atmosphere per year. Ireland generates over 1 million tonnes of food waste each year and a third of that happens in our homes.
Minister McConalogue also stated: “By reducing our food waste, we also show our farmers, fishers and other food producers that we value their work and the safe and nutritious food they work all year round to provide.”
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