The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue T.D. has announced the projects that will receive funding this year from his Department, under the Rural Innovation and Development Fund, for food waste reduction initiatives.
This includes funding of 59,000 to CTC for the continued development and roll out of the Savour Food Programme.
Minister McConalogue, while making the announcement of the successful projects with associated funding of almost €180,000, said
“I am delighted that we can continue to 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 – including SDG 12.3 which calls on all nations to halve food waste and reduce food loss by 2030. These initiatives will further enhance the work previously funded to identify, target and address what is a rapidly growing issue not just here in Ireland, but globally. Ireland generates over 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”.
“The Food Waste Reduction projects are funded from my Department’s Rural Innovation and Development Fund and so they will also serve to address that fund’s overall objective of energising the rural economy by encouraging innovative job creation and sustainable enterprise development”.
Other funding for food waste prevention went to:
- Food Cloud – FoodCloud Apple Gleaning Project. (€60,000)
- 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. (€30,500)
- 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 – (€30,500)