Leanna Byrne
News Editor
The Trinity SIFE teams Food Glorious Food, Prop-Up and Voice for the Voiceless are to compete against UCD, DCU and NUI Galway today in the SIFE Ireland competition. The winning team will go to the SIFE World Cup in Washington DC which takes place in September and is organised by Hillary Clinton.
Food Glorious Food is a Trinity College Dublin student led initiative, set up with the aim of bridging the gap between food waste and food poverty in Dublin. Food Glorious Food links businesses in the foodservice sector with Dublin charities for easy and effective surplus-food redistribution. By participating in this initiative, businesses and charities work together to combat food poverty and avoid sending perfectly good food to landfill.
The Food Glorious Food project started last February as part of SIFE Trinity. SIFE is an international non-profit organization that works with leaders in business and higher education to mobilize university students to make a difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders. Participating students form teams on their university campuses and apply business concepts to develop outreach projects that improve the quality of life and standard of living for people in need. An annual series of regional and national competitions provides a forum for teams to present the results of their projects, and to be evaluated by business leaders serving as judges. National champion teams advance to the prestigious SIFE World Cup.
“I’m very confident Trinity has great chances to win this,” said project leader for Food Glorious Food Vieljeux Indiana. “I don’t know anything about the other project Trinity has because the SIFE team leader decided we will focus our presentation on Food Glorious Food as it’s the stronger project.”
Food Glorious Food are currently working with 7 charities and 3 businesses and are looking for more donors who would be interested getting involved. In addition, they are setting up foodgfood.com. This website will have information on what they do, what other similar organisations in Ireland do and how people can get involved. It will also feature an interactive map that will allow businesses to post what they have available for charities to see.
The project was designed to combat the environmental, economic, societal and legislative consequences wasted food has for Ireland. Research shows that the world’s nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe. In Ireland, while 1 Mt of organic waste is discarded annually about 15 per cent of the population experience some type of food poverty and for those on low incomes this figure rises to 35 per cent. Irish commercial facilities landfill over 433,600 tons of food waste each year. Each kg of food waste costs about €2, therefore the value of food waste for the commercial sector in Ireland could be €1 billion per year.
Under the Landfill Directive (99/31/EC) EU member states are required to limit the total biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) going to landfill. While Ireland has achieved its first BMW target for July 2010, there are much stricter BMW diversion targets in force for 2013 and 2016, which will be more difficult to achieve. A recent EU parliament resolution called for urgent measures to halve food waste by 2025 Food Glorious Food will continue the project next year with Iseult Ward as team leader. According to Ward next year’s aims are to “have as many businesses and charities involved as possible and registered on the website, raise awareness about food waste and have some events. We’d also like to change the legislation on corporations wasting food and donating, like the good samaritans act in the US and the bill they’re trying to pass in UK. That’s thinking pretty far ahead though!”
The other projects, Prop-Up and Voice for the Voiceless will also be competing against Food Glorious Food this Tuesday. Prop up was designed to use empty space in Dublin in a more socially conscious way. Their aim is to create links between landlords with empty space and groups or organisations that need free or cheap space. Nevertheless, Prop-Up has come up against certain difficulties as they secured some good properties but never found the right project to move in.
Voice for the Voiceless is an initiative set up by two Senior Sophister Business Studies students Laura Demery and Lauren Galligan to raise awareness of the underlying issues surrounding homelessness. The project has existed for over a year now, but SIFE Trinity have been involved since February of this year. “SIFE will be taking on the project in September,” explained head of SIFE Trinity, Stephen Culligan. “As Laura and Lauren will no longer be in Trinity our involvement ensures its continuation.” V4V hosted Trinity’s first Homeless Awareness Week from March 12th – 16th and run job skills sessions for the Long Term Unemployed with the Jobcare Centre with student volunteers. They also organise drives within college for items that the homeless need.
