The BETA Technological Centre collaborated in organizing a community meal against food waste

The BETA Technological Centre of UVic-UCC, together with the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food of the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Vic City Council, the “Plataforma Aprofitem els Aliments”, Osona Biocircular, and Creacció, participated in organizing this large community meal held last Sunday. The activity aimed to reduce food waste and raise public awareness of this issue. It was an initiative in which organizers and participants prepared dishes using recovered food and products that were no longer part of the commercial circuit but were still perfectly fit for consumption.

This is an initiative that aims to continue over time to keep promoting social awareness. The event has traveled through different Catalan provinces — Barcelona, Lleida, Tarragona, and Girona — and this year, in its fifth edition, it was held in Vic. This edition doubled the figures of the previous one in Girona, with over 1,000 kilos of food recovered and more than 400 diners served. Anyone could participate in the meal without prior registration; the only requirement was to bring their own plate, glass, and cutlery.

Osona Cuina prepared the meals, offering dishes such as pumpkin and sunchoke soup, trinxat (a Catalan cabbage and potato dish), stuffed eggs, and Torrijas (Spanish sweet bread soaked in milk and egg, then fried). All this was made possible thanks to the recovery of tomatoes, eggplants, sweet potatoes, and zucchinis from the Osona Seed Bank, as well as chard from El Circell, which had no commercial outlet but were still in good condition for consumption. Shops and bakeries in the city were also asked to save products that they would normally discard at the end of the week.

The Commitment of the BETA Technological Centre

BETA is strongly committed to raising awareness about food waste. In fact, the centre coordinates the European project FOLOU, which works to monitor, measure, and evaluate food losses in primary production — and therefore reduce them. Doing so is essential to mitigate food insecurity, greenhouse gas emissions, and the pressure exerted on land and water resources.

“We wanted to show that it is possible to recover healthy and good food that would otherwise be lost,” says Dr. Mercè Boy, coordinator of the Grand Food Recovery Meal initiative from the BETA Technological Centre.

According to figures collected in a study conducted by the Government of Catalonia, last year more than 173,000 tons of food ended up in the trash. This represents about 63 kilos per household, which could have fed 275,000 people for a year and had an economic cost of €902 million — about €330 per family.

Therefore, there is still much work to be done, but, as Mercè Boy adds, “initiatives like these, close to the people, are the first step toward achieving real change.”