August 21, 2018

Community Fridge Network

Community fridges are helping tackle Britain’s growing food waste crisis.

Could a scheme that allows residents to donate their surplus produce help tackle Britain’s £13bn food waste problem?

Towns across the UK are battling food waste by setting up community fridges that give everyone access, regardless of their financial situation.

With the average UK family wasting £470 worth of food a year, the initiative, launched by environmental charity Hubbub, allows locals to donate their surplus fruit, vegetables and perishables to the referral-free food bank.

The Hubbub network currently supports 32 fridge projects across England, Scotland and Ireland with creative partner Tessa Tricks taking inspiration from across Europe.

July 31, 2018

Northern Soul Kitchen

Don’t let it go to waste.

Regeneration and healthy eating in Berwick.

“At the end of the day I wanted the town to have the ownership of it. I didn’t want it to be something I had done, I wanted it to be something ‘we’ had done”, says 25 year old Millie Stanford, “I wanted to build up some sort of momentum for change in the town”.

Millie is the co-founder of Northern Soul Kitchen, a food waste initiative and pay-as-you feel cafe in the heart of Berwick-upon-Tweed. The project, which recently opened its doors on is based in a previously abandoned shop.

Using unsold food from the local Tesco’s and other small local shops in Berwick they aim to create healthy food in a welcoming environment. Customers pay whatever they think the food is worth, making it accessible for those who might otherwise not be able to afford it. You can even volunteer your time and skills to pay for a meal.

June 11, 2018

Toast

Toast the end of food waste with this award-winning, social beer.

One-third of all food is wasted. That’s 1.3 billion tonnes wasted globally every year – 15 million tonnes in the UK.

We recently saw statistics showing that if global food waste was a country, it would be the 3rd largest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet, behind China and the USA.

In the UK, bread is top of the list of our most wasted household food items, with almost 900,000 tonnes of bread wasted every year. That’s around 24 million slices every day!

Toast, a beer company that brews their beers with bread, is on a mission to end this waste.

June 6, 2018

Magic Hat Café

Newcastle’s Magic Hat Café is upcycling food waste into healthy dishes.

A Newcastle cafe is helping to cut down on the amount of food wasted in the community by turning it into affordable, healthy dishes for the public.

The Magic Hat Café collects unused or ‘surplus’ food (food that is otherwise bound for landfill) and uses this to create affordable, healthy meals to lower the amount of food thrown away. This can include fruit and vegetables that are unattractive, bakery products that can only be sold on the day of production, surplus from food growers and end-of-line or unsold produce. The collected food is sorted and then prepared and served at their ‘pop-up cafe’ sites; a process also known as ‘upcycling’.

March 5, 2018

Brewing good

Brewing good: three beer-for-good projects.

From using up leftover bread to tackling climate change, the pick of three projects that use brewing as a force for good.

Use your loaf: Toast Ale

February 20, 2018

Karma App

New app Karma brings food waste battle to UK.

The Swedish start-up sensation is coming to Britain in attempt to slash the 10 million tonnes of food binned every year with 50 eateries already signed up.

A new app could eat into London’s food waste problem by offering a 50 per cent discount in restaurants, cafés and grocery stores.

Karma has taken over Sweden since launching in 2016, with more than 250,000 users and 1,000 businesses signed up across 35 towns and cities. Now the tech firm is serving up the app to Londoners with more than 50 restaurants already on the menu, including Michelin-starred Aquavit, nine locations from French bistro Aubaine and Arket, the in-store restaurant for H&M’s latest concept store.

January 18, 2018

Grub Cycle

Meet the social entrepreneur who deals with food wastage.

Whenever you meet someone who is involved in either a charitable cause or a social enterprise, it’s only natural to wonder where their social consciousness came from. A lot of the time, it’s due to upbringing. The values their parents imparted usually have an impact on what they do later in life.

In the case of Redza Shahid, one principle his father taught him was a key factor indirectly in leading him to co-found Grub Cycle, a social enterprise that deals with the issue of food wastage. And that value is — always stay busy.

Hailing from Johor, Redza often found himself alone on weekends while studying accounting at UiTM in Shah Alam.

November 19, 2017

Oddbox

The Escapist: Oddbox co-founder Deepak Ravindran.

Deepak Ravindran, co-founder of Oddbox, on starting a business that loves all veg.

IN 2015, I decided to quit my investment banking career, having worked in financial services for 13 years. I wanted to start something that solved a real problem affecting people’s daily lives.

On a holiday to Portugal, my wife and I came across an imperfect-looking tomato that tasted divine. We were puzzled as to why fresh produce in the UK’s supermarkets looked so perfect but didn’t taste as good.

Tag: food waste