Food Waste Projects in Brighton and Hove

It’s not food waste if it doesn’t get thrown away, says Ann Baldridge of the Food Partnership. There are many ways that both individuals and businesses can share unwanted food whilst helping others around the city and doing their bit for the environment too!

If you grow your own, you’ll know that sometimes gardeners are faced with the problem of growing more fruit & veg than they, their families, friends or neighbours can eat be it from glut or planting too much. The Harvest Share initiative, run by Harvest Brighton & Hove, can help allotment holders or home gardeners donate their surplus produce to community projects like lunch clubs, day centres and cookery groups, who will be more than happy to receive it and put it to good use. This way, more people benefit from eating fresh, local foods and less goes to waste.

Fruit like apples and pears on trees in gardens around the city often goes uneaten as well. This is sometimes because it’s too high to reach or the trees produce more fruit than you can possibly consume. The Scrumping Project, also a part of the Harvest project, organises teams of volunteers to pick fruit (with permission!) from trees around the city. The fruit is then turned into lovely juice and preserves, or juiced at community events. If you’ve got a fruit tree that bears more fruit than you can use, contact Brighton Permaculture Trust.

On a larger scale, local charity Brighton & Hove FareShare redistributes food from manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers which is near its use-by-date, and still perfectly edible, to 42 organisations in the city that feed vulnerable people. For 21% of the project users, this food contributes to the only meal they’ll eat that day. In providing food to these organisations, it allows them to focus on directing their scarce resources to providing specialised support to their service users.

FareShare is constantly looking to increase the amount of food they distribute and therefore save from being sent to landfill but they already contribute massively to reducing food waste in Brighton & Hove. In 2009 they saved 300 tons of food going to landfill, food that was worth £800,000! They are extremely effective and cost efficient: every £1 donated is translated into £8 worth of food being distributed.

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