Food waste awareness festival debuts in Asia

For the first time in Asia, Singapore will host a community food festival to raise awareness on the 791,000 tonnes of food that are annually going to waste in in the country and showcase solutions to food waste.

On March 25, 2018 at City Square Mall, sustainability research and implementation firm Gone Adventurin and partners will provide a free meal for 5,000 members of the public, made entirely from top quality ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste as part of Feeding the 5,000 Singapore.

The free event aims to start a national movement of reducing food waste in Singapore from cafes, restaurants, retailers including supermarkets, wholesalers and households and organisers hope to encourage the public to accept food nearing expiry (including blemished produce and dry foodstuffs about to expire).

Retailers’ role

They also want to spur wholesalers, retailers and supermarkets to do their part to reduce food waste by regularly donating surplus food to people in need. Michele Huang, director of Gone Adventurin, said the best way to manage food waste is to prevent and reduce wastage at source because by the time the food or ingredients reach consumers, there has already been multiple points of wastage across the supply chain which would be mostly unseen and unknown to consumers. “In Singapore where we don't have a large footprint of agriculture, the closest points to the source are the retailers, such as wholesales markets and supermarkets,” she told Retail Asia.

Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre and a few vegetable retailers in Little India are donating their surplus ingredients and fresh produce for the event and Huang hopes more retailers will get inspired and start to donate their surplus food regularly to food collection agencies.

“Two things which retailers can do almost immediately to reduce food waste are to implement policies such as discounted pricing on cosmetically blemished ingredients which are otherwise of good quality and reduced pricing after 8pm to encourage consumers to purchase and consume as much of the stocks as possible. Failing which, retailers can donate their surplus food to the various food collection agencies who will then redistribute the food to needy individuals/charities,” she explained.

Closing the loop

There will also be cooking demonstrations from Grand Hyatt Hotel, The Travelling Gourmet and Wilder Cafe, local celebrities such as Judee Tan from The Noose television series, food waste activities, live music, food personalities, community talks and more at the event. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own bottle and bag for fruit tea and grocery giveaways.

Partnering organisations for Feeding the 5,000 Singapore include local foodbank Food Bank Singapore, non-profit organisation Food from the Heart, non-profit private initiative Free Food For All and circular-loop insect farm Insectta Farm. The zero-waste event will be run by around 200 volunteers from various organisations and communities and surplus food from the event will be donated to the partnering food distribution programmes.

The internationally-renowned Feeding the 5,000 events have taken place in over 40 locations around the world since its first edition in London in 2009.

More details on Feeding the 5,000 Singapore are available here.