Even though food waste is countered on many official levels, grassroots initiatives and raising awareness are both very important. Promoters of the zero waste lifestyle emphasise that everyone should take individual steps: buy consciously, store consciously and use the leftovers in a reasonable manner. Culinary books and shows focusing on zero waste start to appear, and the values of many forgotten female authors from the end of the 19th century gain importance in the era of consumerism. Sylwia Majcher, the author of Gotuję, Nie Marnuję: Kuchnia Zero Waste po Polsku (I Don’t Waste, I Cook: Polish-Style Zero Waste Kitchen), emphasises that throwing away food starts to become distasteful, while the ability to creatively use the leftover is now appreciated. There is also more to it – learning to plan the menu, creating shopping lists, not buying too much food, remembering different methods of storage, freezing, pickling, pasteurising, drying and reading the expiration labels.
‘Poverty King’ and New Epiphanies
The ennoblement of food waste, leftovers and damaged or broken items, of places and memories, is sometimes the main theme of cultural events. During the feast of the ‘Poverty King’, organised in 2019 in Warsaw’s Ujazdowski Castle during the New Epiphanies Festival, chef Michał Czekajło (member of the Food Think Tank collective) who is the owner of a zero waste kitchen in Browar Stu Mostów in Wrocław, baked a cake from leftovers from the beer production process (brewer’s grain) and served chips made from peelings. For the dessert, Olga Głębicka created a cake baked from stale bread, served on broken porcelain. A big pot of simple soup made from root vegetables reminded us that the time of Lent is a time of poor, rejected produce – such as peelings or root vegetables, or conserved foods which are actually leftovers. Monika Kucia, the event’s co-organiser, said:
Wrinkled celery can serve as a royal apple and a pile of cooked bones can deliver valuable nutrients. Elixirs and liquors, a source of energy throughout the winter, can be made from wild plants.
Sometimes, the fight against waste takes a radical form. In social media, freegans create groups that allow their members to exchange food retrieved from dumpsters (dumpster diving). Initiatives are born from the idea of food sharing – the free exchange of food. Such phenomena are still a niche in Poland but there are already several dozens of active food sharing points.