World Disco Soup Day

World

27 Apr - 27 Apr 2024

This year, World Disco Soup Day will take place on Saturday April 27. The main theme will be ‘’Save our food, save our planet!’’ focusing on solutions to the climate crisis we’re in. The spotlight will be on how food waste reduction can be a tool to stop the climate crisis.

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Every year, the world produces 2.24 billion pounds of waste. If we piled it all together, it would be taller than Mount Everest. Every year, year after year.

15% of the world’s food is lost once harvested and it never reaches the shops. Another 17% of food is wasted at retail and consumer level. (data: FAO) Reducing food waste means redistributing our resources to be able to feed the entire world population – we already produce enough food for 10 billion people!

Food loss and waste also account for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions! This means addressing food waste also means reducing carbon emissions and their dramatic consequences on our planet’s rising temperature.

World Disco Soup Day is a global event created by Slow Food Youth Network to promote the discussion on the topic of food waste, cook dishes from food scraps and enjoy the process of learning and being together. It all started from our need to fight food waste together while having fun, gathering and dancing.

How did it start?

Disco Soup started 8 years ago in Berlin, Germany, as Schnippeldisko, a ‘protest soup’, against food waste that fed 8000 people.

From then on, they started to spread across the world as a fun, meaningful way to bring this crisis into focus. Many different editions have taken place. Each Disco Soup event was individually run, relying on local volunteers to organize every detail, until in 2016, the Slow Food Youth Network Brazil organized a national Disco Soup Day. So, why not do the same internationally?

We got together with our international network of food producers, activists, students and others food professionals and decided to organize the first World Disco Soup Day! Now on April 27 we once again call for attention and action against global food waste, by organizing one of the best known projects of the Slow Food Youth Network: Disco Soup.

“The idea is to give the importance and bigness that the food waste issue has, by doing a big event at the places that suffer with this issue, in other words, by doing the event in the whole world” Caio Bonamigo Dorigon, Brazilian SFYN leader and one of the coordinators of the event.

What’s happening this year?

This year, World Disco Soup Day will take place on Saturday 27th of April, and the main theme will be focused on food policies, emphasising how they influence our approach to food waste and its management. With our mantra ‘’Save our food, save our planet!’’, we aim to show how impactful food policy can be in tackling the climate crisis.

High levels of food waste are a direct outcome of an unsustainable industrial food system founded on a mechanism of wastage and overproduction. Instead of seeing food as valuable, it’s treated like something we can just get rid of easily. To reduce the impact of food waste, we need to do two main things: make less food go to waste in the first place and manage the waste better when it does happen. Policies have a direct impact on waste management. By adopting an integrated approach, a municipality can trigger other positive impacts on the local economy and health, making its food system more resilient and fair. This can happen for example through composting programs, community gardens, and sustainable and holistic food practices. Curious for more? Have a look at this!

If you want to be part of the Disco Soup community, this informative page will explain how to join as an individual or as a community in the months prior to the event and on the day itself. And while waiting for the Big Day, we welcome you to have a look at delicious food-saving recipes from our Disco Soup Cookbook! Plus, follow us on Instagram where we’ll share fun and easy recipes with unusual ingredients that are normally thrown away. Let’s go!

How can you celebrate?

On April 27th we will celebrate the 8th edition of World Disco Soup Day together. How can you celebrate? Alone or with your friends, at home or in a public space: make #WorldDiscoSoupDay the way it is better for you!

Joining World Disco Soup Day can be a chance to learn more about your local municipality’s waste management and inspiring examples of virtuous food policies around the globe. Consider partnering with your municipality and cooperate to create a
Disco Soup together in a public space. For World Disco Soup Day, you’ll learn how to take action and be a pivotal contributor to your local food policy.

Reach out to your local Slow Food community to celebrate in person or organize your own online event. Don’t forget to invite your community and friends, and consider extending an invitation to your local food policymaker. It’s a chance to engage in meaningful conversations about food waste management!

And join us on April 27th at 2pm CEST for a general hangout with all the organizers! We’d love to see you there and catch a glimpse of your live event.

Not part of Slow Food or the Slow Food Youth Network? No problem! You are welcome to join as an individual, organisation or with a group of friends. Let’s celebrate food together and make a difference!

Practical tools to start with

● Registration link (for you and to share with your network): https://forms.gle/A6zut94sgKg4gQ9r7
● Google Drive for World Disco Soup Day 2024

What you will find in the Google Drive:

  1. Toolkits in different languages: made by our grassroots network of Disco Soup lovers! Plus a short Toolkit explaining how to get involved in local food policy!
  2. Design and communication: design assets you can use to promote your event, as well as the World Disco Soup Day jingle to add before your videos. (Note: the World Disco Soup Day banner has the text in psd format so that you can translate it to your local language);
  3. The Big Day: find the updated agenda, the world map with registered participants and useful links to join the community on April 27th.
  4. Your event: here you can find a few folders where you can upload the pictures, videos and fun stories of your event or Disco Soup experience. Be aware that once you upload these files, you agree to share them with the whole community and the Slow Food Youth Network!
  5. Impact: here you will find an impact form to fill in with the data from your individual food waste saving event or Disco Soup.

We are constantly updating the World Disco Soup Day Google Drive, so keep an eye on it for the latest news. This means that you may see that at the moment some folders are empty but we will fill them in as we get closer to World Disco Soup Day.

Save our food, save our planet with your actions

How to take action before the big day:

  • Download our toolkits to have all you need
  • Start saving peels, skins, and whatever you would normally throw away
  • Reach out to your local SFYN to see what they’re organising!
  • Keep an eye on the online events scheduled around April 27th and mark it in your calendar!
  • Buy food scraps from local markets, restaurants and stores before they close! ***
  • Share with us and others how you are going to spend your World Disco Soup Day!

SAVE FOOD SCRAPS WITH OUR RECIPES!

  • Find our food scraps- saving recipe lists and videos on our social media
  • Choose the recipes you’d like to recreate
  • Share your favourite recipes that include vegetables and pulses to inspire others!
  • Record a video of one of our recipes if you feel comfortable, using our Disco Soup jingle! (It’s in the Drive!)

Tag @slowfoodyouthnetwork and use the hashtags #discosoup & #WorldDiscoSoupDay

REGISTER TO WORLD DISCO SOUP DAY!
https://forms.gle/HXKDYU1rDUkwBvhZ7

On the Big Day

Option 1: join us from home
If you prefer, you can organise a Disco Soup at home by yourself or with your friends and family and if it is up to your fancy, you can even livestream your disco soup on your social media and show it to our community! It is important to note that every Disco Soup contributes to the global impact: from the small leftover soup you’re making just for yourself or the Disco Soup dinner you’re organising with your roommates and friends, to the Disco Soup you host at the local market sharing food with passengers.
For your home-event, make sure you get your food scraps from these places:

  • At the back of your fridge and close to being discarded and/or getting expired
  • Leftovers from this week’s dinners
  • At food markets at the end of the day
  • Farms around your town
  • Restaurants and hotels
  • Stores and supermarkets: ask your nearest store if they have any discarded fruits and veggies available for you to take…

***Please note that it is never a bad thing to ask for food that is close to being wasted, in whichever spot. You’re doing both the restaurant/shop owner etc. as well as the planet a favour!

Cook up your recipe from your food scraps and share or livestream your event to tell us about your story, why you chose this recipe and show us how you prepared it. Most importantly: put on some music and enjoy your day with your loved ones and discuss ways together in which you can tackle this problem all together and get your community moving!

Option 2: Disco Soup Events
In case you can organise a physical and public event (AMAZING!!!), share the wonderful taste of your Disco Soup with as many people as possible! For detailed information on how to organise a Disco Soup, you can also read the Disco Soup toolkits in
our World Disco Soup Day Google Drive.

After the event share your pictures and videos with us: you can upload them to the “Your Event ” Drive folder. This year, try to team up with your local municipality so that we can aim for an even bigger impact!

Vote with your fork!

Are you based in the European Union? The European Parliament elections will take place this year from the 6th to the 9th of June. This is a great opportunity to have a say on food policies by voting for representatives that put the Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy in their political agenda.

Your voice matters, so make sure to mark your calendars and exercise your right to vote!
Learn more about the elections and how you can participate here: https://elections.europa.eu/en/

Disco Soup Cookbook

The Disco Soup Cookbook includes around 100 recipes given by activists of World Disco Soup Day in which they asked their grandparents and other elderly people in the community to offer recipes that use leftovers and preservation methods. It is an
inspirational book to reduce food waste and a great tool for some ideas! If you want to have a copy of the cookbook send email to: [email protected]

In Short

  1. Register on this form (https://forms.gle/HXKDYU1rDUkwBvhZ7)
  2. Share your posts on social media throughout to inspire each other
  3. Join World Disco Soup Day with an event (at home or in a public or private space)
  4. Keep an eye on Google Drive with all the information you need.

If you have any questions, send us an email at [email protected]

World Disco Soup Day 2024

8th edition

Save our food, save our planet!

Any questions? Reach out to the WDSD Task Force at [email protected]

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