Zero Hunger? United Nations Leads with Landfill Salad and Recycled Food Thalif Deen - Inter Press Service
go to original January 29, 2016

The Zero Hunger Challenge is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's vision of a world free from hunger and malnutrition, where all food systems are sustainable, women and family farmers are empowered, and everyone enjoys their Right to Adequate Food. (Zero Hunger)

When the United Nations hosted a high-level lunch for visiting world leaders at the UN dining room during the General Assembly sessions last September, they were in for an unexpected surprise.

The lunch, hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a strong advocate of “zero hunger”, consisted largely of recycled food salvaged from the kitchen before it was dumped into garbage bins.

“Every dish was made from scraps that would normally be wasted,” Ban told another group of world leaders at a dinner on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos last week.

One of the appetizers was called “landfill salad,” he said, singling it out as “a small example of sustainable solution” to eliminating world hunger.

Ban, who will be completing his 10-year tenure at the United Nations end December, is vociferously campaigning for the total eradication of extreme hunger by 2030 under the UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by world leaders last September.

Ban said more than a third of the world’s food goes to waste. And “eliminating wasted food in homes and in fields is a key element in achieving Zero Hunger.”

”The United Nations,” he declared,” is ready to lead new, large-scale initiatives to end hunger,” and practice in its own backyard – and in its own kitchen– what it is preaching to the rest of the world.

Danielle Nierenberg, President and co-founder of Washington-based Food Tank, told IPS the issue of food waste is very hot right now among foodies and environmentalists alike.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

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