World Disco Soup Day Date in the current year: April 27, 2024

According to statistics, about one third of all food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted. About half of it is lost between harvest and retail, and the rest is wasted in retail or by consumers. Perfectly fresh and tasty fruit and vegetables might not make it to the store just because they’re too small or misshapen — in other words, not aesthetically pleasing enough for consumers.

When talking about food waste, one should keep in mind that it is not only food that gets wasted. Land, water, labor, energy, capital and other resources used to produce the food that goes to waste are wasted, too. In addition, food waste contributes to global warming because wasted food is disposed in landfills where it emits greenhouse gas.

The first Disco Soup (Schnippeldisko) event was held in Berlin in 2012. Activists from Slow Food Deutschland and its partner organizations cut up hundreds of kilograms of unsold vegetables and cooked a soup that fed 8,000 people to raise awareness of the astounding amount of food waste we generate. They saw it as a fun but effective and meaningful way to bring the global food waste crisis to focus.

Activists from all over the world liked the initiative and started to organize their own Disco Soup events. In 2016, the first national Disco Soup Day was organized in Brazil by the national chapter of the Slow Food Youth Network. After that, it was only a matter of time for the event to go international.

The first edition of World Disco Soup Day took place on April 29, 2017. Since then, it has been held every last Saturday of April. The main focus of the event is food waste reduction and the ways we can reduce our climate footprint through diet.

To celebrate World Disco Soup Day, SFYN chapters across the world organize parties where people turn food waste into a soup and then eat and dance together. Cooking together is a fun way to learn to reduce food waste, but it also encourages people to think about the amount of food waste they produce and the ways to reduce their environmental impact and slow the rate of climate change.

World Disco Soup Day events are organized by activists, students, food producers and other food professionals from all over the world. They aim to encourage people to reduce food waste and adopt a more plant-based diet. You don’t have to go full vegetarian or vegan to reduce your dietary carbon footprint; even substituting part of the meat in your diet with plant-based proteins will have a positive impact.

World Disco Soup is not the only observance that raises awareness of food waste. For example, the International of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste is a United Nations observance that has been held every September 29 since 2020.