SAVE YOUR FOOD CAMPAIGN

The key objectives of the campaign are to raise awareness and inspire a behaviour change among the consumers by actively engaging them to contribute to reduce food waste as well as to increase awareness on food loss and waste through media news of the event.

FAOSEC and Konak District Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry of Türkiye signed a LoA, which gives responsibilities to the partner to conduct six gleaning activities to create awareness on food losses and contribute to reducing food losses through collecting agricultural products that are abandoned for any reason in fields by farmers. With these gleaning activities around 200 kg strawberries, 200 kilograms cherries, 300 kilograms melons, 700 kilograms of cucumbers, 420 kg grapes, one ton of eggplants were harvested and sent to the soup kitchens.

Besides, in support of the SYF campaign against food loss and waste in Türkiye, the “Grown for a Bin” photo exhibition by Austrian photographer Klaus Picher was displayed in numerous cities in collaboration with metropolitan municipalities, schools, universities, and exterior walls of the Embassy of Poland. The exhibition shows the provocative way that food waste is depicted seeks to draw public attention to the issue and bring about a necessary shift in the mindset and behaviour of consumers.

Apart from physical exhibitions, the virtual format of the “Grown for a bin” has been created and uploaded to relevant platforms and websites.

In addition, FAO focuses on the education of children to create behaviour change, so that the efforts to address the food waste and loss problem are sustained. Accordingly, FAO has worked in close collaboration with the International Food Waste Coalition, a group of educational specialists and sociologists, to develop a set of teaching manuals, “Do Good: Save Food!”, which are being used in primary and secondary schools in Albania, Croatia, Hungary, and Lithuania.

The materials for age group 1 (5-7 years old), group 2 (8-9 years old) and group 3 (10-13 years old) have been translated into Turkish and upon the Ministry of National Education’s endorsement, the materials for age group 1 and 2 are expected to be distributed among over six million students across Türkiye.  Age group 3 was released on 23rd of April 2021, which is Children’s Day in Turkey.

Besides, Project team in Türkiye delivered presentations on FLW in the schools to 5-6 and 7th grade students, and the campaign mascot ‘’Cano’’ accompanied to them to take children’s attention more.

In the framework of the project, various visibility activities and materials have been designed and produced in order to increase awareness about FLW and support behavioural change in the public along with “Save Your Food” Campaign of MoAF.  Some of the visibility activities performed include but not limited to the following:

• Development of a communication and visibility action plan for the campaign implementation and regular update of this plan
• Development of a visual identity, for the communication campaign, including guidelines for all visual content and materials
• Design of a campaign website
• Content management for social media accounts
• Development of multi-media communication materials (leaflets, brochures, posters, videos, etc)
• Development of training materials and visibility items
• Development of guidelines: Guideline for Fighting Food Waste in Hotels, Restaurants and Other Mass Consumption Places; Guide on Combatting Food Waste at Food Retail
• Organization of events, exhibitions, workshops, discussion panels, etc, which have been mentioned earlier. SEC Conference, “Enabling the Change” Regional Conference, “Grown for a Bin” Exhibitions, voluntary harvests, trainings at schools are some of the examples of events organized during the  life span of the project

In order to measure the impact of the campaign among households/consumers, The Ministry conducted a pre-test survey in February 2020 before the campaign launch and a post-test in April 2021. Both surveys were carried out via phone with an independent consultancy firm.

The summary of the striking results are:

-              Households saved around 80 million USD by preventing and reducing food waste thanks to better planning of food shopping, meal portioning and reuse of surplus food.

-              The number of people saving leftovers for later consumption increased from 45 percent to 55 percent.

-              The campaign also helped to improve comprehension of the difference between “expiry” and “best before” dates by 20 percent, resulting in less safe-to-consume food being discarded past its “best before” date.

-              Composting of food waste increased from 3 percent to 6 percent.

Besides, the campaign helped to break a Guinness World Record for the “most pledges made for not wasting food”, with 790 000 people taking the pledge on sofranasahipcik.com, in the field of environmental sustainability.

                https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/533865-most-pledges-received-for-an-environmental-sustainability-campaign

                https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-pledges-received-for-a-campaign

The “Save Your Food” campaign is continuing to raise awareness and promote positive actions to reduce food loss and waste and strengthen sustainable practices in Türkiye.