Community Initiatives Tackling Food Waste
Previously we’ve taken a look at why food waste is a problem and what can be done about it, now we take a closer look at some of the initiatives that are taking the problem into their own hands.
Hartlepool Food Network - Yes, we are going to take a minute to talk a little bit about our own work! We’ve been taking in food that would otherwise end up in landfill since 2017, and we re-distribute that food to lots of different community initiatives around Hartlepool, including the Cracket, St Aidan’s Kitchen, and Food Cycle.
This summer we also teamed up with both Hartlepool Borough Council and the Vegetarian Society to provide food kits to families with school-aged children, which included fantastic recipes and how-to videos to make it super easy for children to help out in the kitchen.
We also share our own recipe videos with the goal of encouraging people to cook healthy meals for themselves and their families whilst ensuring they waste as little food as possible.
Hands for Hunger - Leaving Hartlepool for a moment, Hands for Hunger are an organisation serving the Bahamas, their team pick up fresh, high quality food that would otherwise go to waste from hotels, restaurants, and farms, and re-distribute the food within a matter of hours to community centres, shelters churches, and soup kitchens.
They also run regular food drives so that they are able to provide shelf-stable products to their community, as well as running Hunger Huddles, educational sessions for school children of all ages, enabling them to run successful advocacy, food-raising, and fund-raising campaigns.
FareShare - The UK’s national network of charitable food redistributors, made up of 18 independent organisations. They take good quality food from across the food industry and distribute it to more than 10,500 charities and community groups. Some of the groups that receive the food include school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes. Every week, FareShare provides enough food to create almost one million meals for vulnerable people.
Hubbub - A national organisation creating positive environmental change with a number of projects. With regards to food waste, they coordinate and run the community fridge network, which includes over 200 community fridges throughout the UK. Their community fridges are spaces where everyone can share surplus food, including from local food businesses, producers, households, and gardens.
Annually, the 200+ strong network redistributes approximately 5,712 tonnes of surplus food, equivalent to 13.6 million meals, and welcomes over 375,000 visitors.
REfUSE - Based in Chester-le-Street, Durham, REfUSE intercepts 12+ tonnes of food each month from retailers around the North East. They then redistribute the food through their community cafe and restaurant , their private catering brand Conscious Kitchen, partnerships with other charities and their waste-not box delivery scheme.
Launched in 2018, their community cafe is ‘Pay As You Feel’, making it inclusive to those who may be finding it tough to access food. They also run education projects and a supported volunteering scheme, as well as raising awareness and educating about the climate and ecological impact of food waste.
