Social mission magazine gets into bread business to tackle food waste
The ‘nighttime bakery’ rolled out a trial run on 1 October – to coincide with the first anniversary of the promulgation of Japan’s Food Loss Act – which sees unsold bread being collected from various Tokyo bakeries and put up for sale again late at night.
The brainchild of culinary researcher Nahomi Edamoto (65), the pop up bakery is designed to “create a cycle of helping to reduce the wastage of food products that have been made with care and then distributing that food to the people who need it”.
It also gives vendors a boost to sell the magazine, which has seen demand halve during the pandemic.
The Act on Promotion of Food Loss and Waste Reduction is part of the Japanese government’s measures to reduce household food waste in response to Target 12.3 of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Target 12.3 calls on all nations to halve food waste and reduce food loss by 2030.
The Big Issue – founded by John Bird and Gordon Roddick in 1991 in the UK and today published on four continents – is a social investment business that offers people in poverty the opportunity to earn a legitimate income, thereby helping them to reintegrate into mainstream society.
