Foodwe expands food reduction platform to the Netherlands
One year after the launch of Foodwe, the platform aiming at reducing food waste in Belgium, has now signed a collaboration agreement with the Rotterdam Food Bank to promote www.foodwe.nl . The Rotterdam Food Bank is one of the largest food banks in the Netherlands and helps every week 20,000 people in need.
Foodwe is a civilian project, led by volunteers, that provides an easy way to food professionals to reduce food waste. The main scope of Foodwe is to offer donations and sales at preferential prices to charities.
Foodwe is supported by various stakeholders, including farmers' federations. It provides them an economic, social and ecological solution to manage their unsold goods by allowing them to cover at least the cost of harvesting, storage or packaging. The agriculture sector cannot afford to fund food donations at a loss and Foodwe aims to create new distribution channels for these unsold good that covers at least the costs to break even.
"Foodwe offers an inventive solution that contributes to reducing food waste. Food waste equates to 295 kg per person per year in Europe, one third of this is generated by households. This platform contributes to the interests of food producers and actors of food aid, but also helps the environment." Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food to 2014.
The site www.foodwe.nl will be live as of November 12, 2015 and the Rotterdam Food Bank will be responsible for the promotion of the platform to meet its own supply needs. Foodwe is available for professionals (fruit / vegetable producers, distributors, processors, etc.) for food which is too close to the expiration date or which do not meet commercial standards like oddly shaped vegetables which are perfectly eatable however.
To use www.foodwe.nl/or www.foodwe.be/en/, you simply create an account and complete your profile. Once validated by the Foodwe team, the organisation can use the platform.
"We are very excited about the upcoming collaboration with the Foodwe platform, which gives us the opportunity to receive more food. The first donation consisted of more than 3800 super fresh lettuces that came directly from farmers field. We now hope that other farmers and distributors in our region will also register themselves on Foodwe.nl to help us."Annette Koopman dept. Recruitment Food / Funds of the Rotterdam Food.
Foodwe also wishes to avoid waste of public funds and offers its platform for only a couple hundreds of euros per month per country or region. Today there are about fifty food waste reduction projects in Europe, some of which have received hundreds of thousands of euros to develop an IT tool while Foodwe has proven its success and it requires very little means to launch its platform in a new country. In addition Foodwe is unique amongst these projects as it is the only one offering both donations and sales.
Food waste, whether it concerns processed or unprocessed products, food surpluses and/or lost agricultural products, amounts in Europe to more than 89 million tons per year and, in the absence of appropriate action, this will attain 126 million tons by 2020 while at the same time 16.9% of Europeans live below the poverty line.
''Food Professionals may not systematically make a donation since this includes costs such as harvesting or handling costs, storage costs, packaging. Foodwe allows them to donate and/or sell at a preferential tariff covering their costs.” Olivier Neufkens, founder of Foodwe.
About Foodwe:
Foodwe won the European Prize "of the European Week for Waste Reduction." The theme for 2014 was to reduce food waste and there were a total of 11 993 projects. Foodwe also received the 2014 Coup de Coeur of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation and is currently in the final for the price of social innovation organised by UNIPSO.
Contact: Olivier Neufkens +32 477.680.193 – olivier@foodwe.org
Food Waste Evasion
Avenue de la jonction 15
1060 Bruxelles
Foodwe is now finalist for the social innovation prize organized by UNIPSO
2015 Winner of the European Waste Reduction Week prize. The theme of this edition was reducing food wastage (12,000 projects from around Europe were realized).
2014 Coup de Coeur of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation.
2014 Winner of the Brussels Life price of the European Fair for Crowdfunding
Press release distributed by Pressat on behalf of Pressat Wire, on Thursday 12 November, 2015. For more information subscribe and follow https://pressat.co.uk/
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Foodwe expands food reduction platform to the Netherlands
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