If you have been into the Sovereign Shopping Centre, you might have noticed some work being done in one of the shop spaces close to the High Street doors. Let’s face, how could you miss it? It’s been painted ORANGE!
These busy bees many of whom are volunteers, have been making the shop space ready for Weston-super-Mare’s first Fridge of Free Stuff! Sharing surplus food within a community to reduce food waste going to landfill.
Something else that hasn’t gone to landfill is cooking equipment from the now closed Debenhams kitchen, which is being re-appropriated for community groups in Weston.
The Community Scrapstore North Somerset & Weston Artspace wellbeing project also provided the paint. Many shades of blue were mixed together to make enough coverage for the top of the walls.
Weston Town Council’s Climate Change Working Group has been looking at initiatives to reduce food waste. This project is possible through the collaborative efforts of WsM Helping people, For All Healthy Living Centre, The Sovereign Centre and North Somerset Council who are working with Weston-super-Mare Town Council’s Community Resilience team to bring this project to fruition. There is also a list of food suppliers keen to support including Fair Share, Co-op and other local retailers that have surplus supplies of foods that would otherwise be thrown away.
The average community fridge redistributes around 500 kg of food per month, which equates to about 2.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions. The busiest fridges see around 4 tonnes of food passing through each month which equates to a saving of almost 17 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions.
Food waste is generally overlooked as a big environmental issue yet it is responsible for 8-10% of the total human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally.
In the UK we waste 5 million tonnes of edible food every year. By making this food available to everyone we play our part to stop this waste.
We are pulling together a team of volunteers to assist with the running of the community fridge. If you have some free time, would enjoy meeting new people and want to play a part in the fight against climate change please apply with this link http://bttr.im/zin8t
The fridge will launch towards the end of October.