Not just for Christmas!
Santa’s elves had it easy compared to the SAVE food hub volunteers over Christmas and New Year. Across our five communities, in Seaton, Axmouth, Axminster, Colyton and Sidmouth, volunteers saved a staggering 5.5 tonnes of food in December.
Nearly half of that was collected from supermarkets, sorted and handed out at our community larders and fridges just between Christmas and New Year.
The Seaton SAVE food hub shop in Queen Street was stacked high with broccoli, spuds and clementines, and all our teams reported collecting huge volumes of surplus fruit and veg as Christmas drew closer (what exactly do you do with 12 trays of strawberries, Axminster volunteers asked - make jam, of course!) And happily, lots of people came out to make good use of it. Thank you all
Omicron did disrupt a lot of people’s Christmas planning this year, but the sheer volume the supermarkets were passing on to SAVE and other food groups in East Devon makes you wonder just where it would all go without the willing volunteers
And it is not just at Christmas. In the three months, October to December, our volunteers saved over 12 tonnes of food. Good food that has been grown, harvested, transported, packaged and would otherwise have gone to waste.
All this at a time when climate change is threatening food production worldwide. The supermarket chains are trying to reduce their waste, and so can all of us.
Here are three things you can do in 2022:
Only buy what you need, each household wastes nearly £500 a year throwing away food https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/home-hub/food-waste-facts-and-statistics
Learn the difference between best before and use by dates https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-labelling-terms
Find out more about SAVE food hub here https://www.savefoodhub.org.uk