food waste – ◢ ◤

FYP Ideation: Food waste part III

Research and more research:

Talks: Food Waste symposium at NTU

It was great timing that the school actually put together a symposium on food waste last Wednesday that invited social enterprises over for a 3-hour talk to give audiences insights as well as a panel discussion.

It was a public lecture where I found the attendees to be PHD students, bioscience students or groups of students that were interested to tackle Food Waste as an FYP topic.

I looked forward to Ms Nichol Ng’s talk who is a co-founder of Food Bank. She projected some fascinating insights and figures of food donations her organization deals with:

Two full lorries of onion rings were donated to them because 2 customers complained they found onion skins in them. Therefore, they can’t be sold
The Food Bank received snacks in huge amount because of minor packaging errors or because the product’s flavour was not selling too well.
Supermarkets are able to return 90% of their items to the manufacturers. Therefore, its the manufacturers are the ones that are stuck with this food wastage
Incineration is cheap in Singapore hence it is the easy way out. These incinerated food are perfectly edible but are being burnt because it is the easy way out – do not have to account for food waste

Also, during the Q&A session there was an angsty man that expressed his anger and kept questioning who were the ones that could change policies.

I found it rather funny as if the panel was able to answer that, there would not be food waste anymore.

Hence, it really got me to understand that for this issue to start improving, we have to start with ourselves.

Also I was glad that I managed to have a chat with the founder during the break and realize that the food Bank actually organized worked with artists and organized art competitions. Hence, this serves some possibility of collaborating with them for the FYP

More research!

Documentaries: Channel News Asia – IT Figures on Food Waste

After watching a CNA documentary on how households overbuy, I decided to check out my own stash on the dining table.

Here’s what I found

And indeed, these were all expired. I am feeling so guilty.

In just one container of items, there was already this amount of food waste, because of overbuying. Indeed the figure, 40% of food being produced is never eaten truly struck me.

Would you want to check out your kitchen right now?

Essentially, I would continue to think about what is the best way to get this figures presented to masses. Currently, it is to use its actual multitude to create a voice and show this ‘unseen’.

And on a leaving note, this issue of food waste is too infamous that even the number 1 top hit Shape of You has a parody version about food waste.

FYP ideation progress: Food for thought on food wastage

More research!

Further research on food waste has been rather eye opening on this recurrent issue, as there seem to be quite an effort curbing the issue in Singapore.

Just recently on 28 March 2018, there was a Singapore community food festival ‘Feeding the 5000’ that took place at City Square mall. It aims to raise awareness for the 791,000 tonnes of food that are annually going to waste in Singapore.

Apart from festivals as such, there are also social enterprises and other non-profit organisations such as Food Bank and Food from the Heart that collects donated food to be sent to the needy to name a few.

However, the issue of food waste and tackling it seems to have been looked upon in a serious and practical campaign sort of direction. This could a possibility that the issue is known, but not sparked enough to create an eye-opener or topic about it again. Could this be when art or installations come into useful play?

Ultimately, I want to create a channel that makes one realize that we ARE contributing to food waste and the immensity of its scale

Concept generation

1.Use food waste to fight food waste

So, how would you react if you saw this during an FYP show?

Shocked? Enraged?

Great! Now i got your attention.

2. Element of making it personal

What other way to do it but to make them go through food waste themselves?

Pledging against food waste. Selfie + scan item (team lab)

3. Immensity of scale

So there’s a food artist like that: Artist Inspiration

With even further research, I found some photos of this concept of food installation itself. Jennifer Rubell does it playfully well:

The conceptual form

To put things into perpective, I thought of using our weight as a gauge to the tonnes of food waste generated.

Food-human see-saw.

(refer to notebook)

FYP Ideation progress: Food Wastage

After some serious thought on the topics i’ve presented on previously, I decided to go with tackling the topics of Food Waste.

Give the topic a search and tons of articles start to appear from countries across the globe, indicating the seriousness of this social issue.

One might think of a food getting poured into the bin as their first thought of food waste. But they come in several forms namely

Untouched by the consumer
Not bought in the supermarket
Destroyed in transport
Inedible caused by bad cooking

Whatever the case, it is estimated that 1/3 of the food in the world goes to waste.

Also, 40% of the average household bin is made up of food.

A social experiment by American youtuber Joey Salads puts things into perspective, when he reveals the amount of food waste in a bin in 1 hour at just 1 eatery.

To put things into a local context, i’m glad I actually found this funny video of Singapore comedy channel Ministry of Funny.

Indeed why are people angry when he threw bread on the floor, when actually much more is happening this second?

So, why are only people noticing when one blatantly steps out on the streets of orchard road to throw some bread?

What I would like to achieve out of my project is to allow others to realise the immensity of food wastage happening every moment and perhaps include a shock factor that has an element of participatory or an experience.

In moving forward…

I will continue to keep a food journal of my own food wastage and observe the public in general to find mediums that will best bring the message across.

Keeping track of my food waste has made me more conscious on the food I purchase and partake in general. A good thing?