Wednesday, 5 June 2013

Community Fund – Guba – May Update



This weekend, the Guba team metamorphosed from permaculture facilitators, builders & farmers into Cafe pundits for Bushfire, a local Arts & Music Festival based in Swaziland. We undergo this huge transition in order to bring locally produced, fresh, healthy food to the festival goers & raise awareness of the work we do in the surrounding communities. Everything we use – from our seating to our food – is guided by the permaculture ethics: Care of the Earth, Care of People & Surplus Share. 

Our focus this year was to promote two key messages: slow & local. The slow movement works to promote everything that is local. It’s an important message for our consumer-driven time. We have the buying power to influence how our communities thrive or decline.

The festival was a feast for the ears, eyes & soul! Well worth looking up if you’re ever in the region (www.bush-fire.com). Our once a year vegetarian Cafe sparked huge demand from our Swazi-based customers for a permanent Cafe, but these permaculture facilitators, builders & farmers are happy to be back to delivering skills training in our communities…at least for now!

Monday, 6 May 2013

NEW from Vegware : Gourmet hot box

  • completely compostable
  • ground-breaking innovation
  • microwavable, freezable
  • sealable, brandable
http://www.vegware.com/images/uploads/Vegware_gourmethotbox_finalwithfood_800x450.jpeg
 This is a VERY exciting new innovation for 2013 by Vegware. This is the market's first ever eco-friendly, plastic-free, sealable, ovenable, freezable, brandable hot food box with a clear presentation window.

This unique patented product is exclusive to Vegware and made of two parts: a bagasse base and a sealable card lid with a high-heat cellulose window. Ingeniously, the lid adheres to itself rather than the base which means that it can work with pretty much any base material.

Due to huge demand after our initial launch, we are currently out of stock - please contact us info@vegware.co.za for more details, to discuss branding options and to get on the waiting list!

Here's the how-to guide!


How to assemble the Gourmet HotBox by Vegware

Vegware wins FSB's best small business in UK, Queen's Awards for Enterprise in Sustainable Development, and announces Australian expansion

Eco packaging pioneers Vegware win two major prizes in one week, winning the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in Sustainable Development and scooping the £10,000 top prize in The FSB Streamline UK Business Awards. These extremely competitive awards commend the high-growth Edinburgh firm for developing innovative zero-waste foodservice packaging, promoting sustainability and reducing landfill waste in the catering and hospitality sector. To celebrate, the SME has designed its own original Vegware tartan, and announced its expansion into Australia, and the tripling of its Edinburgh office space to support UK and international growth.

Joe Frankel, founder and MD of the global packaging firm said, “We saw that foodservice needed packaging which can actually be recycled after use and responded to that challenge. Our unique solution of certified compostable catering disposals and full recycling support is helping the UK’s biggest operators meet sustainability targets and save money. As a result, we have enjoyed tenfold growth in three years, and now employ a team of 26, up from 2 in late 2009. The Queen’s Award is royal recognition that Vegware is making a positive contribution to the UK economy and global sustainability, and the competitive FSB Streamline Awards celebrates Vegware as the UK’s best small business. Winning either of these is fantastic but this double win is a major coup and we are all absolutely delighted with the recognition. The FSB prize money will be great contribution to our product development programme - as it happens we already have a project earmarked for this, secret of course, for now. We've got a great product, a fantastic team, and the time is right so watch this space!”

These prestigious titles bring Vegware’s accolades up to 24 awards and 2 Scottish Parliamentary Motions. Founded and run from its expanded Edinburgh HQ, Vegware is now a global brand with operations in the UK, US, South Africa, Central Europe and distribution from Iceland to Portugal. Newly-founded Vegware Australia operates out of Sydney. Vegware’s new larger Edinburgh office will be officially opened on 29th May 2013 by Richard Lochhead MSP, Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Environment.

Vegware develops, manufactures and distributes a full range of certified compostable catering disposables, made from recycled and sustainably-sourced eco materials. The firm’s packaging is suitable for food waste recycling after use, allowing caterers to recycle food-contaminated coffee cups and takeaway boxes which often otherwise go to landfill. Their non-profit initiative
 


The Food Waste Network is a free service matchmaking any UK business with local food waste collections and promoting zero waste, supporting WRAP’s Hospitality and Foodservice Agreement and helping Scottish businesses comply with the new waste Regs.

The Queen’s Award office congratulated Vegware, saying: “From its leadership position, the company has educated other firms in the sector about benefits of pursuing sustainable choices. It founded the Vegware Community Fund to support non-profit sustainability groups. It is the only packaging firm to offer, with every order, tailored Eco Audits quantifying carbon savings, virgin material savings and potential landfill diversion.” Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenants will present the award at a ceremony at the firm’s Edinburgh global HQ later on this year, and Vegware will be invited to a summer reception at Buckingham Palace.

The celebratory Vegware Tartan is predominantly green with highlights of burgundy, pink, blue and white. The firm enjoys creativity: its www.FoodWasteNetwork.org.uk imagery includes a life-size map of the British Isles made out of regionally relevant food. On winning the BCE Award for Environmental Leadership in 2012, the firm celebrated by recording The Vegware Song - a jaunty bluegrass song about eco packaging, now viewed over 1,300 times on youtube.com/vegware

CONGRATULATORY QUOTES
1.  Colin Willman, Chairman, FSB (Member Services) commented: “We were impressed by the staggering growth of this company, which now has an established footprint in countries from the US to Australia. Vegware fulfills a real need in the world of catering and proves that eco credentials are right at the heart of our economy’s future.”

2.  Darren Wilson, Managing Director, Streamline said: “Small businesses play a crucial role in supporting the UK economy and as Vegware has shown, the trajectory for growth can be staggering. Vegware identified a clear need in the marketplace, recognised the incentives for businesses to get on board, and made a compelling financial and environmental case for potential customers.”

3.  Quote from Vegware’s Local Green Councillor Gavin Corbett: "As a member of the city's Economy Committee, I still see too many examples of where economic policy and a greener future seem at odds. So it is fantastic to have on my own doorstep a company that is reconciling the two and prospering in the process." Gavin Corbett is Green Councillor for Fountainbridge / Craiglockhart, Edinburgh.

4.  Quote from The Foodservice Packaging Association’s Chief Operating Officer Martin Kersh:  “This is a fantastic and well earned achievement for Vegware and their talented team, and we are delighted the foodservice packaging industry has been recognised by the award of such a highly prestigious accolade to one of our members. Vegware embody the passion, environmental commitment and creativity of the foodservice packaging industry serving a dynamic and growing market. There are many challenges facing our market and this award is a testament to Vegware's dedication and enthusiasm in addressing these issues and to their betterment of the wider community”.

ENDS
1.  Vegware has won a total of 24 awards and accolades, plus two Scottish Parliamentary Motions – full list here. 2.  April was a big month for wins!
a.  10th April: Vegware’s gourmet hot box wins ‘Highly Commended’ in the Essential CafĂ© trade awards.
b.  18th April: FSB Streamline award announced. Vegware is the Scottish Area Finalist, winner of the Business Innovation category, and wins the top prize, being named FSB Streamline UK Business of the Year.
c.  19th April: Vegware is shortlisted in 2 categories in the Foodservice Footprint Awards 2013.
d.  21st April: Queen’s Award win announced – Vegware wins the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development.
3.  Vegware’s zero waste initiative The Food Waste Network is mapping all UK trade food waste collections by postcode, and offers a free matchmaking service for any UK business seeking food waste recycling. www.foodwastenetwork.org.uk
4.  Vegware is a Founding Supporter of WRAP’s Hospitality and Foodservice Agreement which is uniting the foodservice sector around two targets: reducing food and associated packaging waste by 5% and recycling over 70%. Vegware’s pledge to support this is the Food Waste Network – see our HafSA blog Food Waste Stories.
5.  From 1st January 2014, all Scottish businesses will be required to recycle, including many having to introduce food waste recycling – full info here.
6.  The Vegware Community Fund gives small monthly grants to 13 non-profit sustainability projects, with a new recipient being added every quarter as Vegware grows – info here.

About Vegware:
Vegware Ltd is the UK’s first and only completely compostable food packaging company. The multiple award-winning firm specialises in the development, manufacture and distribution of compostable packaging for food service. Vegware’s Food Waste Network matchmakes any UK business with food and used Vegware packaging from caterers, recycling it into topsoil, biogas or compost. Vegware invests in product development and has brought many compostable innovations to market, including hot cup lids, double wall cups, high-heat cutlery and soup containers.

Clients range from the UK’s biggest contract caterers and food distributors through to UK government offices, NHS units and independent artisan delis and cafes. Vegware is owned and managed by its founders. It is based in Edinburgh and distributes out of London, shipping to all over the UK, EU and beyond. The company's products are distributed worldwide form North America (Vegware US), to South Africa, including Europe from Iceland to Hungary. Visit www.vegware.com for the full catalogue and further information.

Further information, interviews and images:
Lucy Frankel
Communications Manager, Vegware
0845 643 0406 / 07906 635 139
lucy@vegware.co.uk
www.vegware.com

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

A young Briton with a lot on his plate - to stop the world wasting food

By Geoffrey Lean
08 Feb 2013



A gala dinner in Kenya will highlight the millons of tons of food wasted all over the world. All the food on the menu will have been thrown away

 In 10 days’ time, 500 ministers, top bureaucrats, UN officials, pressure group leaders and associated hangers-on will sit down to a banquet in Nairobi. Nothing unusual about that, you may say. It’s par for the course at international conferences, the sort of thing that gets some on the Right grumbling about waste, and some on the Left mumbling about taking food from the mouths of the poor.

But this one will be different. Every scrap served at the gala dinner at the Global Ministerial Environment Forum in the Kenyan capital will have been thrown away, part of the mountain range of edible food that goes to waste worldwide. And it will mark the moment that a campaign to reduce it, started by a young Briton, goes global.

The extent of the waste, which will be starkly set out in statistics on the diners’ napkins, is shaming. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which is hosting the meeting, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) conservatively estimate that a third of all the food produced worldwide each year – worth more than $1 trillion – is never eaten. And this when hundreds of millions already cannot get enough and the world’s population is expected to swell by another two billion in less than three decades.

The waste also uses up other scarce resources. Some 500 million hectares of arable land – an area larger than the Indian subcontinent – grows unconsumed food. So forests are cut down and vital wetlands drained to provide land that should not be used. And there is also a massive waste of water, energy and fertiliser.

Yet buried in the scandal lies an opportunity. Cutting food waste by just a quarter, as the delegates’ napkins will remind them, would release enough – in theory – to feed all the world’s 870 million desperately hungry people. Destruction of wild places could be greatly reduced, the release of greenhouse gases curbed and water conserved.



That would demand changes in rich and poor countries alike. In developed nations, most waste occurs because producers, retailers and consumers throw out food that is still fit for consumption. A third of what is grown never reaches the market – largely because it fails to meet cosmetic standards demanded by supermarkets – while consumers throw out 222 million tons of food a year, almost as much as sub-Saharan Africa produces.

Britain is one of the most wasteful countries: the average family discards food worth £480 a year. One way or another, by some calculations, up to two thirds of the vegetables grown in Britain go uneaten.

Of course, cutting back on waste in rich countries does not mean that the liberated food ends up in the stomachs of the poor in developing ones. But by reducing demand, it can bring down prices, enabling needy people to buy more.

In developing countries, 95 per cent of the waste occurs before the food is sold, eaten by pets on the farm or rotting in markets, through poor storage and distribution. In India, 21 million tons of wheat – equivalent to Australia’s entire production – perishes in this way annually, while enough food is lost in Africa to feed 300 million people.

Now, at last, the world is beginning to address the issue. Much of this is down to Tristram Stuart, who, when feeding pigs at 15, realised how much good food went into their troughs. Over the last two decades he has studied the issues, examined bins behind supermarkets, written a book and organised a feeding of 5,000 people on waste food in Trafalgar Square in 2009.

He is also behind the Nairobi dinner, which will help launch a global campaign by UNEP and the FAO. And already things are happening. Partly inspired by Stuart, Britain has been a pioneer, with successive governments launching anti-waste pushes. Waste in homes fell by 17 per cent between 2007 and 2010, he says, while sales of odd-shaped fruit and veg rose by 300,000 tons last year.

France has also initiated a campaign. South Korea has introduced swipe-card bins, charging households for food they throw out. And in China, the presumptive new president, Xi Jinping, has cracked down on banquets and launched a “Clear the Plate” drive, decreeing: “These habits of waste must be stopped immediately!”

“I don’t know exactly how it works,” says Stuart, “but it does. People are amazed – and shocked – by the problem, and want to help. It is a relief in many ways that we can enhance the lives of the world’s hungry and reduce pressure on land by doing things as easy as buying only the food we eat, and eating whatever we buy.”

Why is the Prime Minister’s green speech under wraps?

David Cameron this week made his greenest speech as Prime Minister – going further even than his pledge to run the “greenest government ever”, shortly after taking power. But his officials don’t want you to read it, refusing to post it alongside his other speeches on the Downing Street website.

Which is a shame, since what he said – opening a conference at the Royal Society on Monday – deserves study. He directly took on George Osborne and other renewable energy sceptics in his government, insisting “to those who say we just can’t afford to prioritise green energy right now, my view is that we can’t afford not to”, and adding “the economies in Europe that will prosper are those that are the greenest and the most energy efficient”.

Downing Street struggles to explain why it is keeping it under wraps. It protests the PM was just making “talking points, not a speech” (even though he was reading a text) and that it does not put such “opening remarks” online (although it did precisely that for a similar introduction to an energy conference last April).

Makes you wonder who is running the show.

SOS: This 'living fossil’ is in danger of dying out

Here’s a new cause. “Save the hellbender” may not have quite the appeal of similar campaigns for the whale or tiger, but US conservationists are fired up about an endangered salamander described as “so ugly, it’s beautiful”.

A 2ft-long “living fossil” – whose flattened body has changed little in 160 million years – the Ozark hellbender is being championed by the Tucson-based Centre for Biological Diversity, which is taking two government agencies to court for failing to protect it properly in Missouri’s Mark Twain National Forest.

While 70 years ago – as one collector noted – you could “find a specimen under almost every suitable rock” around the fast‑flowing waters it frequents, now fewer than 600 remain, as pollution, logging and tourism have taken their toll.

Known locally as a “devil dog”, “mud devil” or “snot otter”, it is thought to have got its name because settlers believed it was a creature of the infernal regions, to which it was bent on returning. That’s something that would no doubt have appealed to Twain who, after all, famously advised going “to heaven for the climate, hell for the company”.



Monday, 11 February 2013

Watch a City-Sized Glacier Collapse (Video)




Michael Graham Richard
Science / Climate Change
February 4, 2013
Awe-Inspiring Excerpt from the Movie Chasing Ice
The makers of the movie Chasing Ice were able to capture on film the largest ice calving ever witnessed by humans (so far, but that might not last the way things are going with our planet's climate). It was the Jakobshavn Glacier (aka Ilulissat Glacier) in Western Greenland. The apocalyptic event lasted for more than an hour and when things stabilized, the glacier had retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide!

Plastic Pollution in the Oceans is Causing Problems for Whales, too.

David DeFranza
Science / Ocean Conservation
February 6, 2012 




Every year, humans consume 70 million tons of seafood. Though this is an astonishing volume—one that has a serious impact on ocean populations—it cannot compare to sperm whales which consume more than 100 million tons of seafood annually. Most of this consists of squid and small fish but—increasingly—plastic trash is making its way into the whales' diet as well.

Sperm whales, specifically, have been identified as one of the most intelligent species in the ocean—if not on the planet. They posses the largest brains of any known animal—living or extinct—and use sounds and sonar to communicate with one another, organize into social groups, and even identify individuals by name.

The cosmopolitan species has found great success and managed to establish itself in all of the world's oceans and many of the major seas. One of the keys to this success is their ability to dive deep below the surface—with some dropping nearly two miles—to find food. Even so, they have not been able to escape the scourge of ocean plastic pollution that
has also impacted fish, turtles, and birds.



Though hunting of sperm whales has been regulated since just after WWII, threats like pollution continue to threaten the species. The problem with ocean plastic is twofold: 

First, the mass of trash takes up space in the animal's stomach, reducing their ability to consume enough nutrients. In addition, the releases heavy metals and other toxins as it breaks down, creating a potentially deadly concentration of poison in the animal's fat.

Researchers have identified sperm whales as one of the longest-living animal species on the planet, with individuals regularly surpassing 100 years. Still, the improper disposal of something that—to humans—is as trivial as a shopping bag or bottle cap threatens to not only shorten this long lifespan but erode the viability of the species as a whole.

What are your thoughts, leave us comment!