Heroes for Responsible Diners nasce nel 2012 in Ungheria, dall’iniziativa di 4 amici. Lo scopo è di consumare criticamente sia a cena fuori che mangiando a casa e lo facciamo in modo giocoso, alzando i livelli di consapevolezza sugli effetti delle nostre scelte di consumo di cibo. Shake your hand è il nostro ciclo di incontri con i coltivatori locali, Plastic Bag Fast è il ciclo di storie che condividiamo su FB quando giochiamo per 30 giorni a rifiutare buste di plastica. CarrotMob è un’iniziativa per trovare fondi pubblici per i ristoranti che vogliono investire nell’efficienza energetica. Abbiamo inoltre un sistema di certificazione che riconosce i ristoranti green, giunti attualmente a 30. La nostra base di supporto va crescendo negli anni, i nostri volontari sono una trentina e migliaia sono i lettori del nostro blog, mentre coltiviamo la nostra presenza sui media tradizionali.
It is an initiative launched in January 2012 by four friends in Hungary. We aim to promote responsible choices when eating out or at home. As one chef said to us, we are built of food so what we are eating is what we are becoming, so we should make sure we are making the right choices, but to stop here would be quite selfish as there is also another dimension to the issue: 13% of green house gases are connected to agriculture and then we could go on with deforestation, soil degradation, water footprint just to mention some and all this could be solved by helping people to make responsible food choices, so that is why we try to raise public awareness about the environmental effects of food consumption. We also built a certification system that recognizes green restaurants and encourages the participants in the food service industry to invest in environmentally friendly solutions.
We have currently around 30 restaurants certified for whom we are creating events to meet local farmers, share ideas and problems and also promoting them to the public. We also believe that to reach more people the activities and our communication has to be interesting and inviting, so we focus a lot on finding fun ways to bring over the messages, like our Shake Hands with the Farmer project, where you could get in contact with some really interesting local farmers, or the Plastic Bag Fast, where you were not allowed to accept any plastic bag for 30 days and you could share your stories about it on facebook. We were also the first in Hungary to start a Carrotmob (and have done some more since), helping restaurants to get public funding with a fun event for some investment for some energy efficiency projects. We are proud to say that our support base also grown larger: the original team of four volunteers has grown to become a group of close to 30 people. We have a very active blog with thousands of readers and try to use any other media channel to share our goals (TV, radio, newspapers).
