Southern Hemisphere Roundup

As is the case globally in the wake of World Environment Day, there’s plenty afoot on food waste ‘down under.’ A sampling:

OzHarvest, Australia’s leading food rescue group, just announced it will hold a Feeding the 5K event in late July.

The group recovered 1,600 tonnes of food in 2012. Almost as impressive: The group recently made 17,000 servings of bread and butter pudding, which is a much more transparent name than ‘bread pudding!’

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Meanwhile, we learn here that South Africa wastes 10 million tons of food annually. For a nation of about 50 million, that’s massive. According to my calculations, that means South Africa’s per capita wastage is higher than that of the United States (at 34 million tons/year). And that’s saying something!

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The Pope said wasting food was the same as ‘stealing from the poor.’ Well, those friendly New Zealanders couldn’t quite go that far. In this article, Louisa Humphry, manager of a Hamilton food bank called the volume of food waste “almost a crime.”

All kidding aside, I found myself nodding along with all of the espoused rationales for food waste in New Zealand. I guess it is a small world, after all. And I enjoyed this part on a supermarket owner:

Mr Miller thought many shoppers did not understand that best before meant precisely that. “Some people are convinced at midnight on that day, that’s it,” Mr Miller said.”People think they are going to die. It does mean a lot of that stuff is pulled out.” [to be discarded]

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