SAVE food hub launches in Axminster
SAVE food hub, the community group set up in March to cut waste food in East Devon, held two well-attended events last week. Thursday saw the group launch a new Axminster hub at the Community Waffle House. Perfectly good food from local stores was saved from waste and shared with residents.
Volunteer Aileen Heal spoke about why the new venture is helping the town cut food waste: “We are really pleased to see lots of people coming to pick up food they’ve requested. We hope the whole town will get behind this and help make Axminster the next near-zero food waste town.”
One new user picking up free food having seen the event promoted on social media, was Labour’s Policy Officer for the constituency Liz Pole who said, “Who knew that eating nourishing, free food could be part of helping address the Climate Emergency? Axminster has a passion for environmental issues and it’s great that SAVE food hub is working with our residents to help cut wasted food - responsible for a whopping 11% of emissions. Let’s tackle this with the same enthusiasm with which we embraced the fantastic Plastic Free Axminster campaign."
Waffle Director Matt Smith, who invited the group to use the cafe, said “Partnering with SAVE has given us the opportunity to meet more people from our community”. SAVE food hub plans to launch a further hub in Sidmouth within weeks.
The group uses a sharing app called Olio to re-distribute food but a second new venture in Seaton on Saturday saw an innovative, accessible “Community Larder”. Aileen explained, “We have lots of fresh bread, fruit and vegetables & have been stocking our freezers for weeks. We show people a list of what we have and they request as much frozen or chilled food as they can use, free!”
The innovation sees the group pioneering an accessible way of sharing free, perfectly good food without the use of technology - making it open to everyone who wants free food and to cut waste.
Around 5 million tonnes of perfectly edible food is wasted each year in Britain. This equates to around one third of all the food we produce ending up as waste. In the last four weeks SAVE food hub has prevented over three tonnes of food from being wasted.
As Aileen explained, “What’s unique about us is we collect all types of food, with nothing left to waste. We get asked for advice on a weekly basis because we do something no one else does. We prioritise food banks and community food projects who can’t use lots of the food we collect. To give them large quantities we need to process large volumes. So we need people to request the food from us the food banks can’t use. You’re not taking food from someone’s table nor making anyone go hungry. You’re saving good food and the energy and water used to grow, manufacture and transport it is not being wasted. People say to me, ‘We don’t need it. We can afford to buy food”. What I’d say is, ‘If you care about people and our planet - can you afford not to?’”
If you’d like to volunteer with SAVE food hub or to offer help in another form please email savefoodhub@gmail.com.