Save Your Food Kitchen events start!

According to the Food Waste Index Report (2021), released last month by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 61 percent of food waste occurs at the household level. Increasing consumer awareness and working to make profound and lasting changes in the way that people consume food are crucial battles in the fight against waste.

The Save Your Food campaign has been working over the last year to raise awareness of the origins and consequences of food waste and to mobilize the public to this cause.

On Thursday, 1 April, the Save Your Foodcampaign organized a “Waste-free Kitchen” virtual panel to discuss how to communicate clearer and more effective messages to consumers to fight against food loss. Around 600 participants from the central, provincial and district directorates of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, universities and relevant civil society organizations took part in the discussions.

The opening speech of the panel was delivered by Mehmet Tarakçıoğlu, Senior Programme Support Specialist and Project Coordinator of FAO Turkey. Tarakçıoğlu explained that changing consumer behaviour is a cornerstone of the “National Strategy Document on Prevention, Reduction and Monitoring of Food Loss and Waste and Its Action Plan”.

Aylin Çağlayan Özcan, Director General for European Union and Foreign Relations of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, further emphasized that food loss and waste refers not only to the waste of food, but also to the loss of soil, water, energy and other inputs used in its production.

“The aim of this panel”, she explained, “is to ensure that key messages are communicated to consumers through the Save Your Food Kitchen events and campaign. I hope that we will all leave this panel armed with new information about reducing food waste and saving our food and the intention to disseminate what we have learned.”

At the end of the panel, the participants took part in a Q&A session. In answer to a question about the motivation to achieve a waste-free kitchen in Turkey, Dilara Koçak, a nutritionist and active advocate of the Save Your Food campaign, responded as follows:

“The social, environmental and economic dimensions of food waste call for urgent action. It is the duty of all of us to reduce food waste and to raise awareness about this issue. Only by doing this can we build a world where hunger has been eliminated. Every item of food that goes to waste adds to the inequality of future generations.”