“It is wonderful to see you are collaborating with outside organizations to address the major problem of food waste through organizing food waste awareness events”
National Tidy Towns competition adjudicator, October 2022.
Readers could be forgiven for wondering if the Skibbereen Tidy Towns group undertakes any projects other than food waste, given the volume of posts published on our social channels and here on our web page in the last number of months. Our response is simply that our approach is to do one or two projects well, given the available resources, than do multiple projects to a lower standard. The invitation from the National Tidy Towns competition is to ‘Briefly identify ONE specific project where particular effort was applied since July 1st.’ For 2022-23 we have chosen Skibbereen taking on Food Waste as our featured project and include here a summary of food waste awareness events that have taken place in recent months.
In November 2022, we shared with readers how Skibbereen taking on Food Waste started. In particular, the development of two short videos from data collected from a Skibbereen household waste bin survey brought the message home that there is a careful balance between people, planet and prosperity. In simple terms food waste costs money.
The team at Cycle Sense has a clear approach to the problem of food waste – turn waste into food through composting. This community project aims to ‘convert organic waste into food through composting and the building of a raised bed, made from reuse materials at the Cycle Sense workshop‘ and to ‘produce compost for Skibbereen community groups such as Skibbereen Tidy Towns and Skibbereen Community Orchard and Skibbereen Hospital community garden using the hot compost method.‘ Check out their webpages (food waste and compost/wormery) for more info and details of how to get involved.
Schools are very important contributors to the work of Tidy Towns groups all over the country and Skibbereen is no different in this regard. Over the autumn months, students from three local primary schools were busy at home and in the classroom putting together recipes from seasonal fruit and vegetables for our Young Chef Recipes booklet. Issue 1 was launched in February 2023 with a selection of recipes from students of Abbeystrewry and St. Patrick’s national schools.
In case you haven’t seen it already, here is the link to the online issue. Issue 2 is currently being compiled and will include recipes in Irish from students of Gaelscoil Dr. Uí Shúilleabháin. A small team of TY students from Skibbereen Community School will assist with translations, design and layout during Social Placement week later in April. ‘Tá ocras orainn’ thinking about the mouthwatering recipe creations we have collected from the school.
Leading up to National Leftovers Day on 26 December, ‘the second most yummiest day of the year‘ we ran a social media campaign of tips to manage our food waste in the days leading up to the day. This was a successful event since a number of followers mentioned to our committee members how useful they found the tips. Since 26 December comes around every year we include all the tips here for future use.
National Stop Food Waste Day fell on 1 March. This year, in the weeks leading up to the day, we engaged with fourth year students of Skibbereen Community School to take on the food waste challenge. They did this by testing the beta version of the online food waste course from the Environmental Protection Agency. We were delighted to award a €100 SuperValu gift card to two lucky students chosen at random from the many who completed the course.
If interested in taking the food waste challenge please try the 30-minute interactive course yourself on a desktop or laptop device.
On 27 February the students got to hear interesting facts about food waste from Colum and Sarah from the Clean Technology Centre at Munster Technological University. Here are Colum’s slides that readers may find interesting. After our visit to the students of Gaelscoil Dr. Uí Shúilleabháin we popped in to give some Young Chef Recipe booklets to the students taking the 5-week taster course ‘Introduction to Seasonal Eating’ at the Cork College of FET Skibbereen Centre. It was a busy day!
Now that we are up to date with everything that’s been going on with the team at Skibbereen taking on Food Waste, all that’s left for us to say is that in Skibbereen, every day is an opportunity for #StopFoodWasteDay.
Further information and reading…
Clean Technology Centre: https://ctc-cork.ie/projects/skibbereen-taking-on-food-waste/
Cork County Council: https://www.corkcoco.ie/en/news/cork-county-takes-a-tidy-sweep-at-this-years-tidy-towns
Stop Food Waste resources: Main page: https://stopfoodwaste.ie
Eat it or freeze it: https://stopfoodwaste.ie/shopping-and-storage/eat-it-or-freeze-it-and-use-your-freezer-treasure
How to make the most of your freezer food: https://stopfoodwaste.ie/shopping-and-storage/how-to-make-the-most-of-the-food-in-your-freezer
Bread no knead to waste it!: https://stopfoodwaste.ie/shopping-and-storage/bread-blog-bread-basics
Skibbereen Tidy Towns 