OzHarvest Feeding the 5000 with rescued food to highlight food wastage

Food wastage is an issue close to my conscience and fridge – I hate throwing out groceries from the fridge or pantry. I feel guilty about the financial and environmental waste, as well as the thought that someone else out there really could have done with the extra food.

Feeding the 5000 by OzHarvest, Martin Place, Sydney

Australians throw out $7.8 billion of food every year, according to foodwise.com.au, which equates to every Australian household throwing out $1,038 worth of groceries each year. That’s four million tonnes per year of food which ends up in landfill, and yet there are those without enough food.

Pop-up milk crate garden

And not that food supply is an issue in Australia. Our country produces enough food to feed approximately 60 million people, according to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (including exports, of course) – yet two million people in Australia still rely on food relief every year.

OzHarvest volunteers

Just last month, OzHarvest – the not-for-profit organisation that rescues food and delivers it to people in need – hosted a major awareness event in Sydney CBD's Martin Place, partnering with the United Nations Environment Program (OzHarvest is the official Australian partner on the global Think.Eat.Save – Reduce your Foodprint campaign).

Maeve O'Meara (centre) with volunteers

Feeding the 5000 brought together a number of restaurant chefs and industry figures, hundreds of OzHarvest volunteers and rescued ingredients to raise awareness of food waste and consumer tips to help reduce wastage.

Chef Lauren Murdoch (left) at the vegetable curry station

Surplus vegetable curry with rescued rice, onion relish and yoghurt

A free hot lunch for 5000 people was created out of ingredients that would have otherwise ended up as landfill. The menu included a full-flavoured vegetable curry made of surplus vegetables from the Sydney Markets and rescued sauce from MARS Food, served with rescued rice, onion relish, yoghurt and day-old bread salvaged from Brasserie Bread.

Brasserie Bread and saved potato and ham hock soup station

Dessermakers, Heilala Vanilla and Brasserie Bread's rescued bread & butter pudding station

Lemonade by 42 Bannerman

There was also saved potato soup with smoked ham hock by Martin Boetz of the Cooks Co-Op and James Viles of Biota; rescued bread and butter pudding by Dessertmakers, Pepe Saya and Heilala Vanilla; onion relish by Three Blue Ducks, chapatti from the Sydney Sikh community; gazpacho by Hungry Mondays, yoghurt by Kristen at the Full Circle and a fantastically refreshing home-style spiced lemonade by Salvatore Mammoti from 42 Bannerman Trattoria e Bar.

OzHarvest founder and CEO Ronni Kahn (left) and OzHarvest patron Thérèse Rein
(Photo by Giles Park, courtesy of Liquid Ideas)

Founder and CEO of OzHarvest, Ronni Kahn, said the aim behind the Feeding the 5000 event globally is to help raise awareness about the disturbing amount of food wasted around the world and how individuals, producers, supermarkets and governments can do a lot more to reduce food waste in our country.

"Food waste is a huge challenge that needs to be addressed locally and be embraced within our own homes first, so that we can affect incremental change globally. Our challenge is to create a sustainable food culture that can be shared by all. It’s a paradox that we produce enough food to feed all seven billion of us, yet so many in this world go hungry," Kahn said.

"The aim of this event is to educate all people – producers, consumers and businesses alike. We should not buy into the fact that fruit and veg needs to be cosmetically beautiful before we’ll buy it, because for every bendy or blemished carrot thrown out – we throw away embedded water, energy and fuel,” she said.

Billy Kwong's Kylie Kwong dishing out the vegetable curry
(Photo by Giles Park, courtesy of Liquid Ideas)

Nick Nuttall, UNEP spokesperson, added: “The way humanity manages or mismanages its food supply will in many ways define the 21st century – currently we know that we are not doing a great job with at least one-third of all food produced lost or wasted.”

"All of us are connected to food and every one of us can make a difference in the lives of those in need and the health of our planet,” he said.

In attendance at the Feeding the 500 event were OzHarvest patron and current First Lady (or Mrs Kevin Rudd) Thérèse Rein; Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore and United Nations representative Julia Dean.

OzHarvest founder and CEO Ronni Kahn speaking on the panel

There was also a panel discussion on Food Waste, Food Sustainability & Food Security featuring OzHarvest’s Ronni Kahn; Joost Bakker, sustainable architect of Greenhouse by Joost fame; Anabella Sao, a local grower; Indira Naidoo, author, blogger and former TV personality; Professor Veena Sahajwalla of the University of New South Wales; and Stephen Beaman, Director of Waste and Resource Recovery, NSW Environment Protection Authority.

Efendy's Somer Sivrioglu (right) cooking at the stove(Photo by Giles Park, courtesy of Liquid Ideas)

Chefs throwing in a helping hand included Kylie Kwong of Billy Kwong; Martin Boetz of The Cook’s Co-op (and formerly Longrain); James Viles of Biota Dining; Lauren Murdoch of Three Weeds; Somer Sivrioglu of Efendy; Grant LaBrooy of Three Blue Ducks; and Omar Ivan Andrade, Ben Sampson and Hendrik Vogelzang of Hungry Mondays.

The event was also supported by the NSW Environment Protection Authority’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes). Food loss and waste also amount to a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labour and capital and needlessly produce greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming and climate change.