LIFESTYLE: The Sustainable Table / Helping the Challenges our Environment is Facing One Meal at a Time

Convenience. We want it. We need it to manage the time deficit in our lives this crazily busy world seems to produce.

 
But convenience comes at a cost to our planet and lots of it is food related. Whether it’s the single use plastics our foods are wrapped in, the bags we take it home in, the excessive quantities we put in the bin because we bought too much, left it too long or didn’t know how to use those tasty leftovers. A staggering 5 million tonnes of food ends up in landfill each year in Oz alone!
 
Then there’s the expectation that if we want it we should be able to buy it – all year round. But seasons matter if we want to help reduce the carbon footprint of what we eat and reduce the use of pesticides just for starters. And let’s not just blame big business who’ve made it their mantra to deliver everything the customer wants, 365 days of the year. We can choose to buy seasonal, locally grown and organic where possible. We can help the challenges our environment is facing one meal at a time.
 
Organisations such as OzHarvest, Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, are making a difference at a corporate level. Across the country they rescue more than 180 tonnes of food each week from supermarkets, hotels, airports, wholesalers, farmers, corporate events, catering companies, shopping centres, delis, restaurants, film and TV shoots and boardrooms. It’s been a 16 year journey thus far, and underpinning all of their efforts is education, with their program FEAST which is now being rolled out in schools Australia-wide.