Food Rescue Hospital

Tackling food waste and its environmental impact demands a little knowledge, collaboration, and a good chunk of creativity. 

Large amounts of edible food are often discarded due to cosmetic standards, over-ordering, or short shelf lives. At the same time, the food sector remains heavily dependent on imported ingredients, which contributes to high carbon emissions and reduces local food sovereignty. 

Packed with some bakfiets, a group of talented staff members and volunteers, and the obstinate commitment to make a change in the food industry, Taste Before You Waste ( TBYW) and De Sering are joining forces to establish Amsterdam’s first Food Rescue Hospital. 

A critical link in the food recovery chain, the Food Rescue Hospital is the living blueprint for low-waste, locally sourced, and preservation-based hospitality. TBYW and De Sering will take food that would otherwise be discarded and process it into valuable ingredients, through various preservation techniques - think fermentation and pickling. This not only diverts waste from landfills but allows us to create flavourful, shelf-stable products for our visitors to enjoy from our daily menus, while creating a public laboratory on food preservation. 

Weekly workshops

Everything is interconnected. To fix the large-scale, damaging food systems we take on a pluralistic approach. Tools and expertise are concentrated in a handful of companies, so we want to make knowledge and infrastructure available to our expanding community. 

By integrating educational workshops into our kitchen, we’re building skills and resilience at a grassroots level, making sustainable food practices more inclusive and democratic. 

At De Sering, we run weekly workshops to process rescued food using fermentation, pickling, drying, and other preservation methods. These techniques extend the shelf life of rescued ingredients while enhancing their nutritional and flavor profiles — think of fermented goods such as krauts, vinegars, miso pastes, kimchi, hot sauces, and pickled vegetables.

We invite volunteers and community members to join us from 13:00 until 15:00 at De Sering each Saturday for our workshops. They run from November 1st until March 2026, cutting through three seasons and allowing us to work with a broad range of produce. 

As the kitchen turns into an educational and participatory space, you will learn about food systems, and build collective knowledge around sustainable cooking.

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Running the Food Rescue Hospital

1. Rescuing valuable, local food 

First things first, we rescue food destined to the landfills. We intervene hands-on in the food waste cycle by sourcing food from our local network such as local supermarkets, markets and other food distributors in Amsterdam. 

We accept donations of surplus produce from markets, supermarkets, and food distributors that would otherwise be discarded to give it a second life through intentional culinary care.  

To donate food, please reach out to info@tastebeforeyouwaste.org

2. Processing and skills-sharing

The workshops are a second core activity: rescued food is processed and knowledge is shared, built, reimagined, reappropriated. We directly involve volunteers and community members, circulating and expanding our shared wisdom on how to process food sustainably. 

We ultimately hope this knowledge will enter into more and more households, (community) kitchens, shelters, to reduce food waste independently and sensibly. 

3. Redistributing 

We finally close the loop by redistributing the processed food to directly benefit the community of people living in Amsterdam. We incorporate the ingredients into community meals at De Sering and in TBYW’s Wasteless Wednesday Dinners.

Wasteless Wednesdays are a weekly event organized by TBYW, where volunteers cook a delicious dinner made from ingredients sourced from local distributors and markets that would otherwise get thrown. De Sering centres its kitchen on Volkskeuken, fostering connection through affordable, plant-based meals. 

About the organizers

Taste Before you Waste is an Amsterdam-based foundation working to reduce consumer food waste by providing citizens with the inspiration, knowledge and opportunity for responsible and waste-free consumption. We create a welcoming international community of foodies by hosting donation-based events such as food cycle markets, Wasteless Wednesday Dinners, educational workshops, event caterings and presentations, showcasing that the food that is currently regarded as waste is actually delicious and valuable. This is made possible by our volunteers who contribute by cooking, social media or helping to find more innovative ways to reuse food waste. By raising awareness and empowering citizens, we contribute to a vibrant social movement that pushes for a fair and sustainable food system a socially, environmentally just society. 

Since 2019, De Sering has been a community-driven space where food, culture, and activism intersect, offering 300 donation-based meals daily to ensure food remains accessible to all. De Sering was founded on the belief that strong communities are essential for activism—and for the political left as a whole. At the heart of De Sering is the Volkskeuken, fostering connection through affordable, plant-based meals. In the evenings, we host events, workshops, and cultural programming, creating a lively, inclusive atmosphere.

This project was implemented thanks to the contribution of the Slow Food Negroni Week Fund.