Contributing to food waste reduction

Food waste is a major problem of contemporary world. While ones throw away food on a daily basis, the others starve and struggle to provide food for their families due to absence of proper monetary means. This surprising paradox is still prevailing in my country despite its high level of development. Personally, I was raised to always finish my food and never throw it away, but seeing my friends constantly do so made me realize that the problem is much more prevailing than I thought it was. This kind of realization encouraged me to look for additional ways I would be able to contribute to decreasing food waste. Luckily, I was already familiar with 'Food bank', which is an organization arranging food gatherings in supermarkets twice a year. After volunteering at 'Food bank' for the second year in a row, I thought I knew everything about this organization, but it appeared I was completely wrong. One of my classmates shared that she was going to volunteer at their storage place, where food items of last expiration date are brought from supermarkets, sorted out and given away to those in need. The idea of minimizing supermarkets' food waste and helping people at the same time fascinated me and I was determined to implement it myself.

 

My excitement shortly faded away when I acknowledged that the volunteering will take six hours straight, but this did not made me give up on the activity yet. To my surprise, my imagination of non-stop sorting out of food appeared to be faulty and we (around 10 volunteers) were occupied with the activity only when a new truck of food arrived, but in between that, we had several breaks of thirty minutes or so. (Un)luckily, I was appointed to assort food requiring low temperature of storage, which means that I had to spend most of the volunteering time in a huge cold fridge. At first, I was unhappy to deal with running nose and cold hands, but after a few food arrivals I was sort of used to working as quick as possible to be finished and out of the cold. After all, at least I didn't have to deal with rotten fruits and vegetables. When there were no work in the fridge, I cleaned boxes

where food was present by sterilizing them with two separate sprays. Kamilė helped me and we were extremely efficient due to distribution of tasks - I sprayed, she wiped. It was a great teamwork, just like the sorting out of food items, as we worked together as well.

Overall, the volunteering wasn't physically exhausting, but the conditions of working were not of the most pleasant ones. I hated the smell in the fridge and, of course, the cold really bothered me, but the warm volunteers' room upstairs always made me warm in a short time. The time flew quite fast and I enjoyed to spend my Saturday for a good cause, though I still wish it took slightly less time.