Sustainable Table’s Give a Fork! campaign, reaches out to the heartstrings, and asks Australians to give a fork about food. Some of Melbourne’s best cafes and restaurants have jumped on board to participate in the cause, to say; Hey, we get it, we all get hangry—but this isn’t about going without. This is about demonstrating how easy it is to give a fork.
The initiative aims to open our eyes to the environmental damage our current consumption behaviours result in, and there are some pretty shocking stats to go with that. Transport and home energy use combined, are outweighed by the eco-footprint our food consumption creates, and packaging waste that is disposed of is phenomenal, with a disgusting 1.9 million tonnes of rubbish in Australia from food wrappings. To put it in Melburnian terms, that’s enough to fill the MCG, not once, not twice, but NINE TIMES.
Which begs the question, is the way we’re consuming food completely unsustainable? Simple answer? HELLO, YES OF COURSE IT IS!
So yes, scary stats can be… well… scary, but if we could just jump to the fun bit about us actually eating to help this cause? You got it. Participating restaurants are putting on Give a Fork! dish specials, of which a dollar from each meal will support Sustainable Table’s food education and awareness ventures.
So where can you use that excellent eco-friendly excuse to dine out? Restaurants that are giving a fork are; Saigon Sally, The Botanical, St. Ali, A Thousand Blessings, Entrecote, Journey Man, Kitty Burns, Mr.Mister Café, Mamasita, Pastuso, Taxi Kitchen, Barry and LOADS more (find the rest on the website).
You can look forward to inventive tastes such as A Thousand Blessings’ heirloom carrot with pickled salad stumps, fried peel, crispy kale ribs, carrot top pesto, foraged weeds, whey vinaigrette, carrot top oil, yesterdays rye bread and brewers grain.
The Give a Fork! meals are designed and measured around Sustainable Tables’ Four Food Rules:
- Make the plants hero – make veggies the focus.
- Choose truly free range or organic meat or sustainable seafood.
- Use at least one edible ingredient that commonly gets discarded in kitchens and celebrate it – Did you know that between 20 and 40% of fruit and veg is rejected and thrown away before even hitting the shops? Purely because it doesn’t look good. I mean ouch, adds a whole new meaning to looking like a couch potato.
- Know the provenance of the ingredients – where does it come from?
If you want to pinch those pennies as well as the packaging though, and plan to do a little home cooking, super initiatives such as Tucker Street are on board the eco train. With awesome boxes (that are completely green—as in recyclable, not aqua) packed full of great recipes delivered to your door. Each box in the month of April will be featuring a Give a Fork recipe from legends such as HealthySelfCo and A Thousand Blessings. The best bit is that $5 from every box in April will go towards Sustainable Table’s campaign! We tried HealthySelfCo’s chicken and sweet potato salad this week, and were so impressed, we’ll be heading into the café for round two!
The team at Tucker St have really stepped it up a notch this April, giving GRAM readers the opportunity to receive $40 off their first box purchase using the code GRAMTUCKER. The codes will be live for the whole month of April to help celebrate and support the April GAF campaign.
If you REALLY give a fork, and want to know how else you can help, have a look at one of the 30 Days to #Grexy (which means sexy greenie) challenges, open until April 15th. Challenges cost $20, including a ‘keep your cup’, where you only use recycled cups, bottles and no straws, to going 5 days a week meat free, all the way to fitting all your landfill waste for the month into one container. Because, let’s face it, without sounding clichéd, it’s 2016. Being green is not just logical, it’s fucking sexy.