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How to join the real food movement

Jill Dupleix suggests 10 ways to join the real food movement.

Local and sustainable: home-made honey.
Local and sustainable: home-made honey.Steven Siewert

Want to hang out with beekeepers and home-brewers, grow serious backyard vegies, start a worm farm, stock up on warrigal greens and native saltbush, and eat in season, in sync? Here's your chance. Jill Dupleix suggests 10 ways to join the real food movement.

Have a drink

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Check out GreenUps events ("green drinking to inspire green thinking"), an informal monthly get-together in various Sydney venues for those wanting to know more about sustainability issues while having a drink. greenups.net

Go local

Find good food locally produced near you, from farm gates, pick-your-own farms, box systems, organic retailers and community gardens. Just put your postcode into the map at Local Harvest and click. localharvest.org.au

Go native: Bush tomatoes.
Go native: Bush tomatoes.Eddie Jim

Read the book

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“We can save millions of litres of water and tonnes of air pollution by how we buy our food,” says sustainable coach Michael Mobbs, author of Sustainable House, and Sustainable Food (Choice Publishers). “And we can stop wasting it by turning it into soil to grow more food, by composting, either at home or in the office or in local gardens.” sustainablehouse.com.au

Join the club

The Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, a network of consumers, producers, health professionals and advocates working towards a sustainable food system. sydneyfoodfairness.org.au

Join a co-op

Shop at community-run co-ops such as Bondi Food Collective for organic, locally grown food in bulk (BYO containers), Wednesdays 5.30pm-9pm (0437 149 348).

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Connect with others

Check out the Youth Food Movement ("young people who want good, clean food"), for news on guerrilla dinners and events such as Passata Day, for which volunteers get together to make tomato passato. youthfoodmovement.org.au

Help reduce waste

Buy less and cook more. Choose wonky fruit and veg over perfect. Learn to compost – use a compost bin or worm farm for food scraps. Don't order too much food when dining out. More tips on lovefoodhatewaste.nsw.gov.au

Buy food in season

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Food grown out of season has travelled long distances or has been grown in artificial conditions. Eating what is grown in the same climate as you, means a diverse, interesting, ever-changing diet year round.

Eat more native ingredients

We eat the native ingredients of Thailand and Mexico, after all, so how about our own native mountain pepper, bush tomatoes, quandongs and warrigal greens, grown locally and naturally in our own country.

Feed the 5000 with OzHarvest

Australians throw out the equivalent of one in every five bags of groceries that we lug home. “The level of food waste in Australia and internationally is unimaginable,” says Ronni Kahn, who founded OzHarvest in 2004 to rescue surplus quality food and redistribute it to those in need. In her latest mission, she has joined with the United Nations Environment Program to hold the inaugural Australian Feed the 5000 in Sydney on July 29. Surplus and excess produce will be cooked by Sydney's top chefs at a free lunchtime street feast for 5000 people in Martin Place. “An estimated 20-40 per cent wonky or misshapen vegetables are rejected before they reach the supermarket shelves,” she explains. “We're going to turn them into beautiful curries.” ozharvest.org

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