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On International Day of Awareness of FoodLoss and FoodWaste, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue T.D, is urging everyone to help achieve the ambition of the Department’s strategy, FoodVision2030, which provides a path forward to halve food waste in Ireland by 2030.

In May of this year, the Minister announced almost €180,000 funding under the Rural Innovation and Development Fund, for initiatives aimed at reducing food waste generated by food businesses, retailer/wholesalers, or suppliers in rural areas.  These initiatives will help support projects in rural areas in reducing food waste and contribute to our commitment to reduce the amount of food we waste, in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Food Vision 2030.  Ireland generates more than 1 million tonnes of food waste each year. It is now more important than ever to continue to develop initiatives to help to address this issue on International Day of Awareness of FoodLoss and FoodWaste.

The Department supports a number of innovative projects aimed at reducing food waste at manufacturing and retail level. 

For instance, FoodCloud is an innovative charity which has developed a digital platform to connect retail and other food businesses which have surplus food, which is safe and of high quality, directly with the local community groups which can use and distribute that food to those in need.  This technology is now being extended by FoodCloud to support initiatives in other countries across Europe.

Speaking today, Minister McConalogue said “On International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, I urge everyone to achieve the ambition of FoodVision2030, which provides a path forward to halve food waste in Ireland by 2030.”

Notes for Editors:

Food Waste Reduction funding in 2021 has been made available to the following successful projects:

• Clean Technology Centre, Munster Technological University (MTU-CIT) – Provide a Savour Food Online Training programme for the industry for national roll out to tackle food waste in businesses, (€59,900)
• Food Cloud – this project seeks to investigate the potential for increasing surplus food redistribution from the Irish horticulture sector. (€59,400)
• Foodie Save – this is the further development and expansion of a mobile application (app) which allows businesses in the commercial food sector to sell their unsold surplus food at the end of their business day thereby reducing food waste. (€28,700)
• Carlow County Council – Delivery of a new programme “Optimization+” which brings together supports for SME’s in the Food, Drink and Hospitality Sector to develop an effective circular economy model for their treatment of food and food waste – (€32,000)

ENDS