Food Waste Management Volunteer Program

If you are keen to volunteer for a social cause and help several hungry people to have a stomach-full meal, then join us and contribute towards the cause of reducing food waste in Porto.

Volunteering abroad is a great opportunity to acquire new skills, meet new people from different cultures, and grow as an individual. Volunteering Solutions aims to provide you with a wide variety of volunteer programs that focus on immersing into the culture of another country and helping the local communities directly.

Being a volunteer for the Food Waste Management Project would be a perfect choice for gap year travellers, individual volunteers as well as groups, who wish to travel together and combine their efforts in making a difference.

The program is designed to combat food waste while supporting those in need. It achieves this by providing daily meals to those less fortunate, all while engaging the local community. In Portugal, there are many initiatives dedicated to rescuing surplus food and ensuring it reaches those who need it most.

As a part of this program, you will actively contribute to fighting food waste and hunger in a structured system that feeds over 3000 people every day. You will help the local teams collecting, organising and distributing the excess food from restaurants and cafés to fight food waste in the city. Volunteers will support a centre which recovers food, in good conditions, from local restaurants, supermarkets, and cafés and re-distribute it among families, elderly and homeless people in need. These are people who need food support to feed them and their families.

Volunteers can be working across the centres in Porto and their tasks will include collecting the food from local providers, assisting with packaging it, cleaning used containers, assisting with sorting and storage of any food left for the next day, distributing it to the families and clean up at the end of the shift.

To say the least, it’ll be immensely satisfying to volunteer for such a noble cause.

Why is the Project Important ?

Each year, around 1 million tons of food are wasted in Portugal, equating to nearly 274,000 kilograms per day. This amount of food could feed approximately 360,000 people in need across the country.

The majority of food waste occurs in households, with families responsible for 31% of the total waste in Portugal. Agriculture follows as the second-largest contributor. Common causes of food waste include expired food and improper storage practices.

Food waste has a significant environmental impact. It’s not just a social issue—its environmental consequences are profound. Food waste contributes to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This happens because when food rots in landfills, it decomposes and releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. For every kilogram of food wasted, about 2.5 kilograms of CO2 equivalent are released. Methane emissions account for approximately 25% of global warming.

Additionally, the environmental toll extends to agriculture. Roughly 30% of the resources used to grow food end up being wasted. This includes water, which has the largest footprint of any country due to food waste. According to WWF, around 66 trillion liters of water are wasted each year on food that never gets consumed. For example, throwing away just one kilogram of bananas is equivalent to running a shower for 84 minutes.

Volunteer Roles & Responsibilities

Typical tasks in the program for volunteers include –

• Get involved in food preparation activities if required

• Be a part of food collection teams in supermarkets, restaurants and bakeries

• Packing of food items in small containers and storing them in refrigerators

• Organising the food containers for the beneficiary or family

• Helping out in quality control checks

• Delivering food to beneficiaries

Please note that the tasks may vary from time to time depending on the requirements at the center.

Requirements & eligibility

Volunteers must be 18 years or older at the time of joining the project. You need to have an open mind and a flexible attitude for working in a new and different environment. The volunteer should bring energy and enthusiasm to make a difference. Participants must be fit and healthy at the time of joining the program. Participants should have no criminal convictions and should provide a clean criminal background check report.