With so much food to waste, I'm pretty glad that one of the friends I've made during my stay here in Basel is Josi. She's a mother of two kids working full time, yet she still makes her time to play an important role in helping others as much as she could, especially when it comes to reducing waste.
I've always come across videos on how society have been more conscious on their waste, specifically on decreasing food waste. Never have I thought once I would be able to experience and witness the process of 'food sharing' itself.
It was 9AM when I met with Josi and a few other volunteers at a bakery which had about 3 boxes of bread to waste. And a year ago, they had almost 8 boxes ! Great progress for sure but can you imagine that much is wasted from just one bakery within a few days ?! And that's just one bakery, imagine the many others....... ACCUMULATED!
Anyways, the volunteers were allowed to take as much as they want but with this bakery. The agreement signed with Food Sharing is to have all their food to be taken away and none is to be left behind to waste.
So after the volunteers left, I stayed back with Josi, curious on how she'll handle the excess bread. Oh, oh, I forgot to mention, she's one of the leaders of the Food Sharing group here in Basel. And so apparently just in the town itself, about 30-35 cooperation have joined food sharing and they have about 2-3 sessions every day. The cooperation includes independent grocery stores, bakeries, small supermarkets, restaurants etc; any organization that Food Sharing's capability to handle. So as if for now, the big grocery stores hasn't fully signed up for Food Sharing (i.e. Migros, Coop etc) but some are.
Actually, there was this one time, Josi came with her kids to the playground nearby and gave me some freshly pressed juice which tasted amazing and I asked her where did she get it from, she said it was part of her Food Sharing session the previous night receiving food from a restaurant serving vegetarian buffet!
Anyways, different shop has different agreements. Some would allow you to pick as much as you want, and some like the bakery we went to, requests that you take all the food away with you. If
there's excess food that volunteers choose not to take from the stores, they would bring them to the Food Sharing fridge!
It was about 10-15 minutes walk from the bakery and there were some stuff donated to the Food Sharing fridge from nearby homes or cooperation. Most of the food in the storage would be gone whenever she comes to visit it within a few days. She shares that those who come by for the food are usually pensioners or the ones in need.
There are also some basic (without fridges) Food Sharing storage you can find in some neighbourhood areas but they're usually requested by the residents nearby and is approved by the Health Department.
To Josi, it was spending only an hour of her Saturday morning to help reduce waste and ultimately providing food to those in need. To me, it was life-changing. It was just an hour but she has no idea how much difference and impact she has made to the world in that one hour. It might have seemed so little, but within that one hour, she (and the team of volunteers) prevented 3 boxes of delicious breads from being wasted, and a starving person finds comfort in the cold with food.
There's still a lot more I wanna find out about this movement but for now....
PRETTY AMAZING RIIGHT?!
