Add Category
The repurposing of food waste is becoming a bigger trend in Bendigo as food businesses look at ways to deal with increasing costs and demand for more sustainable practices.
Key points:
- Bendigo businesses are coming up with ways to integrate food waste into produce
- It's as Australia produces 7.2 million tonnes of food waste each year, with 70 per cent still edible
- Bendigo producer Sue Gerdsen says she's passionate about finding a use for "ugly fruit"
Neighbourhood Collective Australia chief executive Rosita Vincent said the pandemic and floods, showed the community how fragile food networks could be when hampered by weather and transport issues.
"People are really keen to have a decentralised, local model where they're connected more to the people growing the food and making the food," she said.
"People are keen to learn to use food in a way to reduce waste."
According to Foodbank, 7.6 million tonnes of food is wasted in Australia each year, 70 per cent of which is still edible.
Ms Vincent also runs the Bendigo Community Food Network on social media, where producers and businesses share ideas on how to collaborate.
"There's a real appetite in the community to look at what we have in terms of food growing around us and to value the local food system," she said.
Donuts and brittle
Bendigo confectioner and owner of Bendigo Brittle Greta Donaldson makes hundreds of kilos of nut brittle each year from an industrial kitchen.
She breaks all the brittle by hand but it comes with plenty of leftover shards and dust.
"They're natural in the way they break. So they're really pretty, they look really great," Ms Donaldson said.
"Over the past few years I've gifted some of it to people, but it's never been a commercial idea.
"It's great it's minimising any food waste from our product."
However, rather than going to waste, the dust and shards are now being used locally to create doughnuts.
The idea came about when Adam Parsons, the franchisee of Walker's Doughnuts shop in Bendigo and Epsom, approached Ms Donaldson about working together on a local doughnut.
Mr Parsons was captivated by the taste of Ms Donaldson's brittle.
"It was one of the nicest things I've ever tasted in the way of its subtleties of flavour," he said.
Preserves passion
Sue Gerdsen runs Vintage Kitchen Preserves where a large amount of her stock is made from food that would otherwise go to waste.
"I get any ugly fruit that I can find it, whether it be at a shop or whether it be on a nature strip, or in somebody's backyard," she says.
"Then I go ahead and I cook something out of it and make some beautiful products."
Ms Gerdsen says people often view discarded or imperfect fruit and vegetables as waste.
"It's far from wasted," she says.
"Many things can come out of something that looks ugly."
In the lead-up to Christmas, Ms Gerdsen sets up a temporary store in the middle of the Bendigo Marketplace.
She encourages locals to enjoy the produce of the region.
"I want people to realise in the middle of an international shopping centre, that we have an amazing food system in Bendigo and there is so much to utilise here," Ms Gerdsen said.
"Bendigo is the City of Gastronomy, we have so many opportunities to utilise what's in our city.
"People just need to have a go — head out onto the streets and go to the farmers' market to find out what's around."
But Ms Gerden admitted the Bendigo community could improve its attitude towards food waste, which would have positive effects for the next generation.
"If they did it well enough I wouldn't find the amount of fruit and food that I find everywhere," she said.
"So we can always do it better — a lot better.
"I want the Earth to remain the same as it is and even improve it for my grandchildren.
"I want them to have a child-like existence when they're little like I had."
Loading form...