No Time to Waste

The climate is changing and so must we. Luckily, creating sustainable alternatives can be tasty. Lada Klimešová studies Biology at the University of South Bohemia and spends her free time fighting food waste. She joined MnH to talk about gleaning, dumpster diving, and why there really is no point in waiting to do a PhD.

What are your current food waste projects?

I run the community fridge at the Faculty of Science where I study. People put in food when they have too much and take food out of it when they need it. We also sometimes do community picnics using food which would have been wasted. The idea is to educate the wider public and get foods into stomachs not bins!

Where does the food come from?

When we started these projects I visited various eateries and restaurants in České Budějovice to ask if any of them would be willing to donate extra food for our community fridges and picnics. Most of the stuff for the community fridge comes from one bakery. People do add food themselves too of course but the highest demand is for fresh baked goods. I hope that everyone involved gets the message that throwing food out should be a very last resort.

What made you start thinking about food waste as a huge problem?

I have spent quite a bit of time in the USA, most recently on two summer internships. That is where I started “dumpster diving” which means recovering food that is thrown into the waste bins of supermarkets at the end of the day. I used to find such amazing food there; it was perfectly usable and even luxurious. After that it was hard to buy food anymore. I would walk the supermarket aisles and think that half of this stuff would be in the dumpster by evening. So what was the point of buying it?

Is dumpster diving common in the US?

No way! Like here, people think it is weird or gross. But the US just wastes food on a completely different scale to here in the Czech Republic. You only have to look at their fridges. A normal family has a fridge that would probably serve a restaurant here. They even buy milk in gallons (3.8 gallons). So it is no wonder that so much food is generated only to be wasted there.

Do people dumpster dive here too?

It is somewhat harder here. In the US it was not considered trespassing. Here the supermarkets make it hard by deliberately spoiling the food or employing massive security around the dumpsters. The police can be nasty too.

Do Czechs waste less than Americans?

In the CR any supermarket which is larger than 400sq.meters is legally obliged to offer unused products to food banks. That is potentially really positive. But I look at all the huge supermarkets just here in ČB and I wonder: who are they donating to? Who is coordinating it? I volunteer with the ČB Food Bank (the government organisation in charge of getting food to needy people in South Bohemia), but they are just a few people and the task is enormous.

What work do you do with the food bank?

I help give food a second chance by “Gleaning”: harvesting food which farmers don’t want. Farmers can only sell food which looks “attractive.” So much food is wasted because of a societal idea that it does not “look right”. Through Gleaning, farmers call the food bank to send volunteers to harvest the remaining produce for people in need. But timing is vital and not many people can drop their work and family commitments to rush off and harvest wonky carrots for the day.

Which of your projects most inspires you?

I love giving talks about food issues to children and adults. I try to make the talks fun and interactive, like theatre. I want people to appreciate food more and be totally grateful that we have it. Kids need to understand where food comes from. Students are usually more interested in this issue than adults and luckily they have the time and energy to really try and change things.

You participated in the recent “Fridays for the Future” school strike in České Budějovice, in which schoolchildren walked out of their lessons to protest our lack of action on climate change. Do you feel this movement has the power to change things?

The school kids are amazing, and it is wonderful to see children in every country calling on politicians to make changes so that their future is not one of famine, chaos and environmental collapse. Of course, politicians don’t want to make difficult, costly and unpopular changes, so they must be pushed. Likewise, the media don’t report the climate strikes half as much as the latest news on Babiš. I get annoyed when adults criticise those children by saying they are too young and should finish their education before they express their opinion. But as the kids themselves say, they simply do not have that much time. We have so little time before the damage we are doing becomes irreversible.

How do you stay hopeful?

I do get overwhelmed by the scale of the problem sometimes. In the USA I dumpster dived at night, got back to the dorms at midnight and didn’t finish sorting the food till round 2am. I would go to bed with my head full of all the food waste I had seen and how this is happening everywhere. I decided I had to describe it to people who know nothing about what is going on. So I started to give talks and they have become very motivating for me. Education is the first step to change. But I am done with studying for a while! After my MA, I plan to travel and be more active in environmental causes. All the forecasts suggest that our lives will change beyond all imagination in the next decade, as the real effects of climate collapse kick in. So there really is no time to waste.  

For more information see:

Fridays for the future: https://www.fridaysforfuture.cz

Limityjsmemy: https://limityjsmemy.cz

ČB food bank: http://pbjk.cz

Gleaning project: Facebook group: Paběrkování po Budějovicku