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Archive -Seychelles

Forum looks at managing food waste in a more sustainable way |09 July 2018

 

 

The panelists answering questions from the audience

‘Don’t’ Waste Eat’, was the theme of a forum aimed at finding solutions to food waste and its effect on the environment which also help tourism establishments to reduce and manage their food waste in a more sustainable way.

The forum, attended by hotel managers, restaurateurs, environmentalists and tourism representatives was held at Eden Bleu Hotel on Wednesday evening and  involved partners such as the Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Foundation, Betterfly Tourism, an organisation from France that brings forward solutions for food waste reduction, the University of Seychelles (UniSey) and the Seychelles Hospitality and Tourism Association (SHTA).

Official representatives were principal secretaries Anne Lafortune for tourism and Alain de Commarmond for the department of environment respectively.

Eden Bleu’s general manager, Manuel Policarpo officially launched the evening with a short remark saying said hotels always fight and struggle to decide on the right portion to present to the guests and that the forum will provide them with an opportunity to take better care of how to manage food waste.

There was a short screening of food waste from FoodCam during the evening. FoodCam was invented in 1999 in MIT by Will Glesnes and Jon Ferguson, to reduce the food wastage and leftover problem.

Food Cam’s idea is quite simple -  if any food producing outlets have some leftover food, they place it under the food camera apparatus and press a button. That triggers a notification that gets sent to everyone in the on Twitter, Slack, or via email, including charitable organisations who hand out food to the homeless and let them know that free food is available and they are most welcome to come and collect.

Rosetta Alcindor, a young UniSey graduate in environmental science, presented her baseline study on food production where she outlined the findings on food waste from three hotels in Seychelles, following a survey that she personally conducted.

Marianne Hinsinger, a consultant from Betterfly Tourism in France, made a presentation on Edgar, a food waste software, that looks at solutions of food wastage.

After other various presentations related to the issue, the audience were free to ask questions.

Presentations at the forum also looked at food waste in our society which comes down to choice.So why is food waste the world's dumbest problem? Because it's really not that hard to solve, as long as each of us is committed to it. Nobody likes wasting food. It’s just something we have not been paying much attention to. 40% of our food never gets eaten.

Part of the reason we overbuy food is we’ve got tons of space to store. Refrigerators have increased to about 15% since the 1970’s.

When it comes to food people do not like seeing empty space in their refrigerators or on their plates, so they tend to fill up everything. It’s not just refrigerators but the average dinner plates have increased by 36% since 1960.

When you have a big plate you tend to put a lot of food on it, whether you can eat it or not. And if we can get the food going to waste to be eaten, we will not only be fighting hunger but global warming.

 

 

 

 

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