One evening Anna Sachs walked past a bakery and watched the salespeople shoving the leftovers of the day into the garbage cans provided with their hands full. Next to it sat homeless people begging for food. Today Sachs is the chairwoman of the Ebersberg food sharing association, and she was deeply touched by the incident. This contrast was the trigger for her current job, she says.
The Foodsharing Ebersberg association, which she established together with other committed people, has existed since the beginning of this year. Anna Sachs is by no means the only one committed to saving food. The association now has 161 active members, and the Foodsavers regularly pick up goods from supermarkets or restaurants and find new uses for them. This is intended to curb food waste – and thus also make a contribution to protecting the climate.
Lisa Rütgers, climate protection manager for the district, explains the connection between food waste in consumer society and climate change. “When we waste food, we waste resources.” Due to the high rate of food being thrown away, there is an enormous waste of space. “If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of CO2.” The numbers are enormous. Not only is space wasted, vast amounts of water and energy are also wasted on the product that ends up in the bin. The goods also traveled a long way: production, processing, transport routes and packaging, again transport routes, garbage can. The history of many foods.
Saving good food, creating an appreciation for it and creating “education for sustainable development” are some of the goals of the Ebersberg Foodsharing Association. The concept includes cooperation with dealers. The association maintains 23 active collaborations with supermarkets, bakeries, weekly markets, canteens and even festivals, and they all have to hand in leftovers on a regular basis. Since it was founded, the association members have already saved around 78,000 kg of food in 2,730 missions – all of them on a voluntary basis.
Most of the members work in professions that have nothing to do with nutrition. The reasons for their involvement are varied. Board member Lea Schürmann discovered food sharing through a friend. She brought bags of rescued groceries home with her until Schürmann no longer just wanted to benefit from it, but wanted to participate himself.
One approach to reducing food waste could be to get rid of the best-before date, the Foodsavers believe. Far too many consumers would go by the date printed on them and throw away the product to the day. You should rather rely on your senses. You can easily taste or smell something whether something is really bad. In addition, one often looks at expired products when they are no longer edible. It is essential to provide more information here, Lea Schürmann. You have to know what the data on the packaging really mean.
On the one hand, far too few customers would accept the offer of some supermarkets to offer “I’m-still-good” products at half price on extra shelves. On the other hand, the fear of losing customers or being branded badly is too great for many market owners, explains club chairman Sachs. Liability must be changed, she says, supermarkets should not have to fear the consequences after they have dispensed. “That makes our work difficult again and again, that one is so restricted.” No supermarket chain wants to be associated with poor quality.
That is why cooperation agreements with the shops are so important for the food sharing association. Then they could not be held liable, should a product be bad when it is taken over, the supermarket does not have to answer.
The foodsharing organizers only take products that cannot be served on the boards, because these have priority, says Sachs. They do not want to be a competitor, but simply cooperate with supermarkets that the boards cannot work with. The principle of food sharing differs from that of the tables. The focus here is not on the needs of the recipient, but on the recycling of the products.
At the end of May, helpers from the association set up the first so-called fair divider in the district: two shelves and a refrigerator, to which everyone can bring products that others can then pick up and use free of charge. Something new does not have to be included to compensate. place. The fair divider is located in the service office in Zorneding and is open to the public from Monday to Friday between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. All of this works without personal encounter and can therefore also be used under the currently popular contact restrictions.
The club members not only have the recycling, but also good tips for their own purchases. So it is a bad idea to enter a shop with a growling stomach. You put way too much in the car. It is better to think about what is necessary beforehand and then go ahead with a structured shopping list. In addition, the “correct storage” of the refrigerator is important. “Old” products should go up, newly purchased products down. As soon as something “fresh” is there, everything else is saved as “old” and therefore often as bad in the head. If you have brought too much with you or cooked too much, you can find out what you can freeze and for how long on the Internet. Or on the organization’s website at www.foodsharing-ebersberg.de indicate what you have to give away.