Food is central to life, without good nutrition we fail to thrive, for many reasons the UK is in crisis around food. Seems a silly thing to say, after all we are a rich western nation, but with depleted soils, overuse of industrial chemical fertilisers, the drive for ever increasing profits around food, ready meals, palm oil and other fillers, laziness on our part, climate in crisis, and that’s before we get to poverty, and the wastage of food that seems to be part of everyday life.
The Waterside Food Project is our small attempt to help with these issues.
Our work covers -
Food waste, collecting surplus and unsold food from supermarkets.
Food poverty/waste, getting the food we collect handed out to those in need and reducing food wastage.
Cooking, inspiring more cooking and less takeaways.
Growing Food, encouraging others to have a go at growing some of their food.
Knowledge, empowering people to understand where and how their food gets to them.
Compost, we compost anything that cannot be used by people or animals to ensure no waste at all, and creating living soils And of course that takes us back to growing food!
The collections from supermarkets happen 7 days a week, and we have an amazing team of drivers who go out every night either to town or locally collecting the surplus foods left at the end of the day from up to 8 supermarkets per day. By having the community fridge in Hythe library and the Langley food box we are able to deal with frozen and use by foods.
Every Thursday we run a free community meal made with supermarket surplus foods. This is held in Blackfield.
Parts of the project we are yet to get working are
Composting is a perfect community action, one we can all take part in. Although we are composting the the small amount we get left with each week, we could be doing so much more. if you would like to see community composting in the waterside and think you could help please let me know.
Teaching and empowering knowledge around food, this will come as all sides of the project grow.
We are just one little part of the cog in a whole system surrounding food. Huge numbers of people across the UK are doing their bit to make the system a little bit better There needs to be a gear change on how we as a society think about, grow, and consume food. I hope our work can go a little way to shifting towards a more regenerative system that is fairer to people and our biosphere.
Can you be part of that shift too?
https://www.facebook.com/Watersidefoodproject