Food Waste Combat is a project launched within the platform JCI am responsible, which aimed at reducing food waste in our local community. We wanted to achieve this goal by informing the community on the local and global dimension of the food waste phenomenon, as well as by educating the community on ways of managing and diminishing food waste.
We started the project by conducting a local survey, with the purpose of identifying the citizens’ habits and knowledge on causes of food waste, thus establishing a starting point in our food waste combat action.
In October 2015, the Food Waste Combat team participated at the National Sports Nutrition Conference in Târgu Mureș. At this conference, we presented for the first time the results of the survey conducted in September 2015, as well as our priorities for the next period and we debated on topics such as the legislation in force regarding food waste and possible viable solutions to combat this phenomenon.
In December 2015, we formed a partnership with the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Tg. Mures to facilitate the process of informing the community on the food waste phenomenon. With the help of second year students from Nutrition and Dietary Discipline, we carried out an action of informing and educating kindergarten and primary school children on food waste and other aspects of nutrition, adequate hygiene and water consumption. At the end of the courses, the children received a symbolic award from JCI Targu Mures – a book sign that should remind them not to be wasteful when it comes to food.
Considering that Easter Holidays may be the perfect time to try to fight food waste with charity, our team, in collaboration with Saint Elisabeta Association, organized in the spring of 2016 an action of donating the food surplus to needy people in Mureș County.