Sidmouth joins the fight against food waste
SAVE food hub, the community group fighting food waste in East Devon, has launched a new Pop-In Community Larder in Sidmouth in collaboration with Sidmouth Voluntary Services (SVS).
Sidmouth residents can now collect free food Monday to Friday, 9am to 12 noon from SVS headquarters at Twyford House, in Coburg Road near the Triangle Bus Stop. Wherever possible, a photo of the food available will be posted on the SVS Facebook page.
The initiative is a result of a collaboration between SAVE food hub, Sidmouth Voluntary Services and supermarkets in the town including the Co-op and Waitrose and is part of a growing effort to reduce the 5 million tonnes of edible food currently being wasted in Britain each year. Fresh bread, fruit, vegetables and more will be on offer to anyone who can make use of them, initially on a trial basis until December 2020.
Rich Allen, Sidmouth Coordinator for SAVE food hub, said: “This has been a real team effort and I’d like to say a big thank you to the SVS Trustees for supporting the trial and to all the staff at SVS for going above and beyond to support this idea. The supermarkets have also been so supportive and flexible to make sure the project runs smoothly. We hope to see as many people as possible getting involved and look forward to saving lots of good, in-date food from going to waste in Sidmouth. SVS is also open for morning coffee, so people collecting food can combine the two and help fight food waste while enjoying a morning cuppa!”
Sidmouth residents will also have the chance to claim perfectly good food, saved from going to waste on Mondays from a volunteer’s home and on Tuesday & Wednesday nights from 8:30pm at the Sidmouth Dissenters Chapel opposite Tesco.
Robert Crick at the Dissenter of Sidmouth Community Centre, has kindly given permission for SAVE food hub to use the Chapel as an evening base. Pick-ups usually start around 8:45pm and the team aim to distribute all the food by 9:30pm at the latest. All items will be listed via the Olio sharing app – to download the app on your smartphone or to create an account on a desktop computer, go to: www.olioex.com
In the last four weeks, SAVE food hub have saved over three tonnes of food from being wasted in East Devon but there is even more that could be done.
Aileen Heal, Trustee for SAVE food hub said: “Don’t think that this isn’t for you – we already give as much food as possible to local food banks and community projects. We need more people to request food from us that the food banks can’t use. We’re talking perfectly good, in-date food that has required energy, water, labour, manufacturing, packaging and transport to get to our shelves – it’s a huge environmental problem if we let that all go to waste.”
SAVE food hub is actively looking for more volunteers to help save even more food in East Devon. If you are interested in joining our team, please get in touch here.