Hello 2022

Not even a new one but anyway time runs so fast…

From time to time I get a message from this blog that someone is trying to contact me… and I feel so ashamed not being capable to login and reply and anything… The truth is that I have been so busy living and studying and dealing with myself that I didn’t have time to to be an activist or at least to write about it :D. Another point – I happened to get older somehow without realizing I got old and much less progressive, much less active and quite depressed….

Things went up and down all the time but I am so happy to tell you that I am doing fine. Although the world is in the fire of violence I feel quite ok.

I have finished my master’s few years ago, I have moved to different locations few times and I have even started my career in Norway as dishwasher and toilet cleaner! What a success!!! I haven’t lost my mind and I haven’t forgotten what I have studied (plant ecology) but life has been quite a thing. I am currently much more active as a soap maker and candle maker and macrame maker. I have made an Instagram account for all of my activities (rather silly and time consuming) but if you want to keep in touch follow me there:

@fromdumpster – not really active account but that one is about food waste and activism

@mydliplch – soap making is so much fun and if you want to see me in love – you have to see me making soap

@glodecandles – I have started to make soy candles – inspired by Norwegian nature, love and beauty

@beingtangled – I have always been into macrame, being a seasonal worker in Norway just woke up this part of me and I am trying to push it further.. there is still a long way in front of me but I love it anyway – micro-macrame jewelry!

I thought that I am probably out of food waste for good (after Covid that stopped me as many others) but then I happened to get an invitation to have a talk at Vegan Festival in Brno! I am scared a bit – I don’t remember all these statistics as I used to do. Never mind I don’t think that food waste awareness should be about numbers so I am ready.

See you soon Brno, tomorrow is the day!

Food waste news in 2018

There is something new going on in the food waste problematic and I am convinced that you should know about it. Tatadadáááá (cheerful music), supermarkets have to donate their extra food to the food banks!

What does it mean?

The stores bigger than 400 m2 have to donate food which is still edible but not possible to sell to the food banks. Lately the food can be distributed to the people in need and the circle is closed. No waste = no hunger.

Waite, is it really going to work so nicely without any troubles and without any waste? Maybe… the number of supermarkets which is belonging to the area of one food bank is huge. It is so large that the food banks collect donated food through their own funds are not capable to do it. That is pretty sad… moreover, the food bank staff have to go trough all the food and record it. Additionally, with increasing amount of donated food is also growing danger of food wasted by the food banks themselves.

What if there is altogether wasted so much food that whoever in need or with short budget doesn’t have to buy any food… Does it sound crazy? No, there is more truth behind this statement than it looks like.

• 30% of the food is globally wasted.
• Most of the food waste comes from rich countries (that counts also for The Czech Republic).
• The food wasted in North America and Europe together would feed all the hungry people in the world three times.

Clearly, there is so much food wasted in Europe that people in need could have even troubles to eat it. The food waste doesn’t count only for the supermarkets, it concludes also producers, transport, processing, restaurants and above all households.

I cannot wait what will happened lately and if donations will work.

Stay in touch!

Lada

How we almost lost our public fridge

Has the hygiene institute right to close Czech public fridges?

YES…

We have almost lost our public fridge in Budweis and probably all the others would follow us lately. That didn’t luckily happen and the public fridges have a bright future in front of them.

The hygiene institute has found the public fridge in Budweis and since than they are trying to find a way how to fit it into broad hygienic rules. The problem is that it is special, it is so special that they didn’t know what to do…

CLOSE IT OR LET IT BE?

The problem is hygienic standard in the Czech Republic. When you sell food, you are responsible for the quality. When you give people food for free you are also responsible for it. Finally even when you have a public fridge with sign, that it is on one’s own responsibility, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. 

“Why shouldn’t the founder be responsible for his/her fridge?”

1) Because it is against the “public fridge philosophy”.

2) Because there is nobody who knows about every single item and where does it come from.

3) Because the founder cannot ensure anybody that the food is 100% ok, I am sorry we would love to but there is no way how to do it.

I had a meeting with too people from hygiene institute about the issue “there is nobody responsible for the public fridge and we have to find a solution”. They were even ready to give me an agreement that I will be responsible for your diarrhea – NO, I couldn’t! Moreover, I would never sign anything like that! I am not crazy.

We have argued about it probably 1,5 hours. There was no way how to find a compromise. They didn’t want us to cancel our Facebook page (Here!), they were not ok with renaming the public fridge to the public container. They just wanted someone who would be responsible for it. There was no one…

We were so close to losing our public fridge… They made a final call and got a solution! Somehow it was possible, the public fridge will stay as it is and there is nobody responsible for it! (If you ask me…it wasn’t an accident that they didn’t know about it before… just a disgusting security practice – to let ME fall into troubles. )

Celebrate this big / small victory with coming to our public fridge

(Nová 3, České Budějovice, Czech Republic).

See you there!

Lada

Benefit concert for Food Not Bombs ČB

We feed around 20 people ones a week. The food comes from dumpster, local Food bank and other donors. Even if we try to do our best in using food for free, we still need ones a time to buy spices, oil, flour, sugar, salt… Just the basic, you wouldn’t find in our kitchen any meat and we don’t buy any milk products or eggs.

Benefit concert is a way how to rise awareness and show people what we do and collect money for the most needed items. We had our concert a week ago and it was a great night full of music and food.

We had even prepared T-shirts with our own printed design which was made by Jane Jay as well as the picture on our poster. The T-shirts are very special because Jane and Hanka and Kuba made them at home and used second-hand T-shirts. You can still buy them by us, just contact us via Facebook.

We have invited for the concert Potmě, Tosiro and 0100. The last group 0100 didn’t even want any money for transport to Budweis. We are very grateful to all of them for they time and help to rise money for Food not Bombs. The final sum was 3200 Kc, which is enough for us at least for one or two years.

The leftovers were used for Saturday’s food distributing.

No waste as it should be. Thanks for your support ♥

Lada

National food collection day

I was thinking about this project very hard, should I go there or is it against my conviction? I am speaking about nothing else than a food collection in a big scale.  This one is every year in  whole Czech Republic and help food banks to get food from common people. Food banks give all the donations away to the people in need as homeless, children’s homes and shelters.

That sounds pretty cool. The problem is that the food collection centers are in supermarkets. It is nice of people when they donate some food to people in need on the other hand, for the supermarkets is also nice that the people shop extra stuff there. For me is the biggest problem that this way is made bigger demand for food which is usually not wanted. I just think that supermarkets wouldn’t be so kind to let the collection happened there if it wouldn’t be good for them.

And my decision?

Was YES! I wanted to see it and maybe find out how bad/good is this kind of collection. The strongest argument for going there was that supermarkets could be more open-minded to donate regularly food near to expiration date to the food banks when they participate at the food collection day.

Totally 12 211 kg of collected food from 20 supermarkets!

That is the point!

I just want supermarkets to donate food which would be otherwise wasted.  

I was there for few hours, it was fine but pretty exhausting. That doesn’t matter for me, I feel like I did something good for others and even get know the head of Food bank of South Bohemia . The best thing for me and the stuff that matter for me was that I started to cooperate with the Food bank and that is pretty awesome. For example tomorrow, there is an event “Night outside” to support homeless people. We will be there with Food Not Bombs České Budějovice and some of our food will be from the South Bohemia Food bank. I will have a talk there, keep your fingers crossed!

Lada

 

Food wastage and Carbon footprint

I have already written about Food wastage by commodities which shows how much do we waste of grains, meat, milk products, fruits and vegetable.

There is still more!

Did you know that green house gasses (GHG) made by food wastage are third biggest compared to production of GHG by countries? That is a lot! Why should we care about that? Of course that GHG have an important role on global warming. Even worse is that this third place is a waste, it is made for nothing…. The amount of GHG would be even greater if we would count emissions due to land use (LUC) – at least by 25% and potentially by 40% higher (FAO 2013).

Another great graph shows us contribution of each commodity to food wastage and carbon footprint. The major contributor of carbon footprint  in food waste are:

• Cereals/grains with 34% – Why? The number is so great mostly because of nitrogen fertilizer usage , fuel for cars
• Meat with 21% – feeding!, manure management  which makes a great amount of methane, energy used to make appropriate conditions for animals
• Vegetables 21% – nitrogen fertilizer and fuel for cars

Products of animal origin make together 33% of total carbon footprint with only 15% of food wastage volumes (FAO 2013). Do you see? Wasting of meat  – even in small amount is really bad.

Have a look at the last graph of Carbon footprint of food wastage by region with per capita results. You can see that Europe, North America & Oceania and Industrialized Asia have the greatest carbon footprint of food wastage , the winner is North America & Oceania (FAO 2013).

Don’t forget the most important thing, even if you come from the region which has one of the biggest impacts on producing carbon as a side effect of food wastage, you can do your best and reduce food waste. We can make a difference together.

Lada

Food wastage by commodities

What is the most wasted commodity? Why? How bad is the wasting of it? I have found for you some appalling information.

Food wastage differ in between the commodities, that is caused by their regular way of the production and of course by the consumption. The following figure shows  how much is produced for every commodity in blue, food wastage is in red and green barks determine edible part of wasted food.

From FAO 2013

Cereals / grains

You may think that beef is the only suitable food for you but when you look on the figure, you can easily see that the biggest consumption is of grains. The wastage here is not great but compare to the production looks pretty good. On the other hand, bread could be usually sold only during first 24 hours, you don’t want to see everyday wastage of that from every single shop… For an idea – wastage of donuts from The USA.

Fruits and Vegetables

Vegetables and fruits make important and healthy part of our diet and as you can see, there is a big wastage of these commodities. It is easy to guess why, both of them are short time-lasting and demanding nice handling. What is the worst, both of these commodities are wasted in great number in still edible conditions. I can only agree with it, food from dumpster is mainly from this group and yeah, it is still edible. If you didn’t read about food wasting by phase of supply chain, look here “Food wasting – Where do we waste?“. Some pictures from dumpster diving in: Estonia, Germany, The USA.

Milk and Meat

Last but not least! There is a great production of milk and milk products in the world which is more or less connected with meat production. I want to pin point that wastage of them is not high and even the production of meat is pretty low … The problem is that even a small waste of these commodities is the worst one, because there is much more behind it. Look bellow on another figure – Contribution of each commodities to food wastage and land occupation.

From FAO 2013

So even if we waste just a tiny part of meat and milk products, it just makes the greatest part of the wasted land. The land which we didn’t need to occupy because all the products were in the end wasted…

There is more to know! I am definitely gong to write more posts on water consumption, Carbon footprint, money … just follow me and I will give you more.

Lada

 

 

What happened with my Public Fridge in The USA?

Do you remember the Public Fridge which I founded during my internship at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center? It is already more than one month since I left so I thought that It would be nice to bring some news.

The Public Fridge at SERC

The idea to make a Public Fridge started already when I was in Germany, cause there are Public Fridges everywhere, have look here! So it happened, I had two talks about food wasting and then I borrowed a college fridge from Pat (one of the senior scientists) to try it if it works for summer. And It did! It worked even better than I thought, we shared food every day and there was nothing wasted

.

The first tiny Public Fridge at SERC

People were worry how it will be with the Public Fridge after I left. Because I was sure that this is a right place for one and it worked so well I have found two people who could take care of it. The idea of reducing food waste supported from all of the sides so we have bought a new fridge for this purpose (just a weekend before I left).

 

Me with two fridges  a first one and a new one!

Kim was so nice that she have sent me a new picture from October 3rd. It looks pretty well and I am really proud of all the people who make a difference and try to reduce food waste.

 

We have also a Public Fridge in Czech Budweis but it doesn’t work… it is not in the best place and people don’t know about it/ don’t have any extra food/ study somewhere else…. I would like to change it, make this Public Fridge works or start a new one at my University campus. More news? later!

Lada

Rekola – the bikes which got a second chance

Have you ever dreamed about having a bike which would be service-free and would be exactly on the place you need it? You know, when you go out in the evening and there is nothing just a long, boring and cold way home which takes forever and you don’t wish the entirely time nothing else than to have a bike….

You are not the only one who had this dream.

 

Rekola

Let me tell you about a guy Vítek Ježek who made your dream happened already in 6 cities and towns of Czech Republic (Praha, Brno, České Budějovice, Olomouc, (Pardubice) and Teplice). Yes, I’m speaking about Rekola, the bicycle sharing of reused bikes which are more or less from dumpster.

Rekola are a volunteer activity of bike-lovers who reuse donated bikes which were often broken and incomplete and repair them for the community of people who wants to take advantage of using bikes without caring of them.

How does it work?

1.You come to a bike/ find a bike via app/ SMS/ internet browser

2.Borrow the bike asking for code via app/ SMS/ internet browser

3. Use it for maximum of 3 hours and park whenever in the zone you want

4. In the end you just have to let others know where the bike is again via app/ SMS.

From the user point of view is the biggest magic in having a possibility of using all the pink Rekola bikes not only in your city but also in the rest of the Czech Republic. For me, it is like a magic, the bikes “repair themselves” and thanks to a good and caring community when is one lost many times is found by someone who care of this awesome project which cost you just a little bit of money.

From the serviceman point of view? Please ask my boyfriend he is probably in the Rekola workroom – today, tomorrow, the entirely week… cause the magic “repair themselves”:P

Bikesharing in Czech Budweis

I am a lucky one because Rekola are also in my home university town.

The service-team of Rekola CB

There are plenty of pink bikes everywhere ( exactly 55)and we have even 2 scooters with have the funniest names ever (sorry this is just for Czech – Copročmeč and Odražnožka) of course that bikes has also their own names and I am really pleased that there is one called Princess Lada (from well-known Czech  fairytale).

Princess Lada a name of one bike

They have celebrated 1 year of existence  on September 19th of Rekola CB. So I made a cake for the service-people who spend their free time caring of bikes.

Birthday cake for Rekola CB

Rekola in Czech Budweis had this season 12 700 borrowings and in all towns together are 80 551  borrowings (till 30. 9. 2016) and 2 401 users (at all 4 923 people tried Rekola).

Do you want more? I will tell you a secret, there are another 20 “pink-bike-bodies” (no idea what is the right name of it:D, probably “frames”) which will be early ready to go in the streets of Czech Budweis.

“Pink-bike-bodies” ready to be used

Stay tuned and you may get an opportunity to name new bikes on their Facebook sites.Never have to walk anymore, spread the idea to improve our transport system.

 

Follow Rekola on Instagram and Facebook.

Lada

Food Not Bombs in DC (part 1)

Read how I was lucky to get known new people who do difference in food waste.

A week ago I was pleased when a Czech initiation Zachraň Jídlo posted on their Facebook page a video about an American guy Will Reid who spends $2.75 a year on food because he get all his food from dumpster. Look here!

Will Reid

Of course that I wanted to meet him really badly maybe as much as you wish to meet Brad Pitt/ Rihanna/ whoever else. He is not a person going just for free food but someone who as me want to point out food waste as an environmental problem and also a trouble of unrealistic expectations about our food (ugly doesn’t mean less valuable).

I post my latest post about “How to get over 100 donuts for free” on Facebook page of Food Not Bombs in Washington DC (I live now around 45 minutes by car from DC but without a car is DC still unreachable for me). Guess what! Will had answered me, I didn’t even know that he is from DC and also his wife Daniela which happened to be Czech. I was even more lucky when they offered to take me at Food Not Bombs event in DC last Saturday.

If you don’t know what the magical name “Food Not Bombs” means, do not hesitate and read about this movement in my post about Food Not Bombs in České Budějovice. I hope you feel some curiosity and want to see where is the nearest FNB because here is my answer: Go and help! they are everywhere ( for Czech Republic look here).

Food Not Bombs  are all around the World!

Read more about Food not Bombs in DC in next post! I promise it will be as inspiring as all the people I met there are.

Lada