What is foodsharing?
Foodsharing.de is an online platform and real life community founded in 2012 that helps to save and redistribute surplus food to prevent foodwaste in Germany and Austria. It is managed by the Foodsharing association (foodsharing e.V.).
How can you participate?
There are two basic levels to the foodsharing.de platform.
Individuals who want to avoid foodwaste at home can register on the platform to become so-called foodsharers. They can then upload virtual food baskets with the food they do not manage to eat themselves for pickup by whomever wants to consume their contents.
Those who want to fight foodwaste more actively can take a quiz and become a foodsaver. Foodsavers are those volunteers who pick up leftover foods from cooperating sellers, such as bakeries, organic shops, markets, but also wholesellers and large supermarket chains. To become a food saver, you have to take a quiz on foodsharing’s guidelines and food safety standards. Once you have passed this quiz, you have to go to three food pickups with experienced food savers who show you the ropes.
How do the cooperations work?
It is important to know that a food saver cannot just pop by any shop to pick up their leftover produce and other food items. There has to be an official cooperation which is typically started by food savers by asking a supermarket or bakery if they want to cooperate. Once a shop agrees, the pickups are coordinated via teams on the foodsharing platform where you can write your name into the pickup slots provided.
Once in the shop, most often in the delivery zone in the back, there are usually crates with food that would normally go to waste. We food savers go though the crates, split up the food between us, throwing away the produce which is not save to eat any more.
What do we do with the rescued food?
When we are done, we are free to do whatever we want with the food, as long as we do not sell it or do not throw it away. Foodsavers might put virtual baskets with the food that is too much for them to use up. They might distribute surplus food to neighbours, friends and colleagues. Or they take it to a Fairteiler, (teiler = sharer) a foodsharing community pantry or fridge. Everybody can take out whatever they want or need and put in whatever they want, as long as it is not past its sell-by date.
Your run-of-the-mill candle is probably made of paraffin wax. Paraffin wax is derived from petroleum, coal or oil shale. If you want to cut down on your use of petroleum-based products, you might want to avoid paraffin candles. Burning fossil fuels in the form of paraffin candles is not only bad for the environment, studies have shown that it can also be bad for your health. Researchers at South Carolina State University have found that “paraffin-based candles […] emitted toxic chemicals like toluene and benzene. […] Frequently lighting many candles in an unventilated space could lead to problems, and may aggravate asthma, cause allergy-like symptoms, or irritate the respiratory tract.“
Beeswax is a natural wax from the wax-producing glands of bees. While this is not a vegan option and large-scale bee farming is very similar to all other types of factory farming, I believe that there is some value in supporting your local, small-scale beekeeper. I talked to my local bee keeper and he told me that he harvests only a small amount of beeswax and uses most of it to prepare the frames for the hives in the next season. Based on this information, I decided that to me beeswax is a much too valuable resource to burn. I‘ve decided to use the small amount of beeswax I buy in cosmetics, but if you decide to use beeswax candles, they are a lot less toxic than the paraffin ones.
If, like me, you are too lazy to make your own candles, you could go for a wax burner. This nifty contraption consists of a ceramic bowl with a glass fibre wick which is held in place by an aluminium ring. You can feed the wax burner with leftover candle stumps. My slighlty pyromaniac husband thinks that this part is really fun. The glass fibre wick lasts a long time, as long as you don‘t use beeswax or candles with glitter particles in it and keep it covered when it‘s not in use to protect it from dust. You can also replace the wick if it doesn’t work anymore. Now, if there is a chance that the candle rests you‘re using are made from paraffin, you should take care to properly ventilate the space you‘re using it in and you should not use it every day.
etable oil lamp, you can simply form a wick holder from a piece of wire, thread the wick trough it and place this into a dish containing the oil you want to burn. Here, I used the leftover wire from a spiral notebook (I probably should have stripped the white paint off before using it). In place of a store-bought wick, you can also plait your own from a 100% cotton knitting yarn. I left my oil lamp on for three hours and it only used 11g of oil. It might also be possible to use the wax burner with vegetable oil. I have not tried that yet, but it would be awesome if that worked. The most sustainable oil to use in your lamp is probably the one that is produced closest to you, such as sunflower seed oil or rapeseed oil in Germany, but olive oil if you live in a Mediterranean country.