Rsa2

RSA Brief Collaborative Consumption Esme Rees

STOP WASTE! SHARE FOOD

RSA Brief - Collaborative Consumption Esme Rees

- Design a product or service that gets better or more useful the more people use it so that sharing becomes more attractive and viable.

With the still looming ‘age of austerity’ and discussions about ‘doing more with less’ pervading our daily consciousness and conversations, sharing presents new opportunities for everyone. Technological advances and changing consumer behaviours mean that sharing and leasing products as an alternative to owning or buying is easier than ever. Airbnb, Netflix, ZipCar, and many others have made sharing more common than ever before.

We can now share and collaborate not only with our neighbours, but also with people on the other side of the world in new and resourceful ways.

‘Collaborative consumption’ is a relatively recent term that describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through online technology and social networks on a scale we never knew possible before.

However, collaborative consumption also raises new questions for designers, for example, if many people are sharing a product, how do you design it differently?2 It might be designing products that have a longer lifespan so that they can better withstand chronic use or the design of a service that meets the needs of many people. Sharing by many people of the same product means a long-term effect of less production and therefore less waste. In addition, sharing is more cost effective than buying something for one use or occasion. Many people in urban areas find sharing increasingly attractive where neighbours are plentiful and storage space is scarce.

This brief asks you to think about what is best when it is shared by many and improved through use.

In your research, you might consider the following questions: — what can easily be shared by many people and what are the benefits?

— what role can design play in making sharing more attractive for everyone?

— why don’t people share as much as they could?

— are there physical and mental barriers to sharing?

— how could the experience of sharing be enhanced?

— what forms of security, acknowledgement and reward could be designed to further promote sharing?

For the purposes of illustration only, the following would all be viable responses: — a product that can be used for many purposes, and therefore, can be used by many people in different ways — a product that actually improves through multiple users or increased overall use and doesn’t easily fall into disrepair — a communications campaign that effectively highlights the benefits of sharing the particular service or product that you have identified — a communications campaign that encourages sharing at a general level — a new or redesigned mode of public transport — a product that improves a particular mode of commuting: walking, cycling, driving, etc — a better designed carpooling system … and many others are possible.

COLLABORATIVE collaborate group joint together everyone combined team community neighbours family peers friends agegroup under 25s over 25s elderly school church local shops businesses cornershop convenience post office newspapers post mail access network computer email letter word of mouth reach voice heard

listen understand reason reasoning purpose reasult meaning concept effort change develop improve insentive expectations plan grow share connect trust respect strength willing need give charity volunteer gelp

CONSUMPTION consumer buyer user use gain consume devour eat digest divulge greed grab need want have take keep steal waste throw away discard forget cost spend money rich counteries first world gather collect build up rubbish garbage recycle environment carbon footprint sustainablity

better off worse off hunger starvation food global warming world issues unaware lack of care education government save our world every little helps change develop clean up britain green clean living climate danger control

ENVIRONMENT

WASTE

COMMUNITY

FOOD

STARVATION

CHANGE

CHARITY

CLIMATE

CHOOSING A THEME Food waste.

INSPIRATION. My list of words can be seperated into groups of key themes - consumerism, charity, hunger, waste, community etc. I short listed a few key words that stood out for me and began to look at how they could be linked together. Eg: Food waste, community environment, environmental waste, climate change etc I have always grown up in a home where food was valued and where possible, never wasted.

My Mum is an excellent cook, a Chef in fact, although she is too modest to refer to her occupation as that. Not only is she masterful in the kitchen, she also has six hungry mouths, including her own, to feed everyday.

We aren’t particularly wealthy and food shopping is expensive, particularly for an ever growing young family and for this reason, not much got thrown away. If there were leftovers from a meal they would be packed up into tubs and eaten for lunch the next day. ‘Bubble and Squeak’ became a meal in it’s own right and I have fond memories of frying up vegetables and mashed potato in a pan in the first house I ever lived in. As the eldest, and having no recollection of anyone else being in these scenes, I can only confirm that I must have been about four. Even then, food was not to be wasted.

I know that if my Mum was questioned on this moral decision to value food in all it’s forms she would tell you that the ‘waste not what not’ attitude was bestowed on to her by my Grandma.

My Grandma; a woman known to have tins of food in her cupboards nearing half a decade old and a prime runner in the contest for the least wasteful human being in England. So much so that she coined a phrase that is now readily used amongst all my nearest relatives. ‘Remember, Grandma doesn’t like waste’.

Meal times with Grandma occasionally involved foods that one would not usually wish to consume. Children chasing mushrooms around their plate pushing away unwanted fish pie would lead to this one poignant question being asked: ‘What doesn’t Grandma like?’ and in chorus we would all reply, defeated.

‘Waste’.

And so it came to be. Food wasn’t wasted and we developed a pallet for all kinds of flavours. I actually am now very fond of mushrooms, and fish pie. I also know that meals can be made from almost anything, given that a few key ‘store cupboard ingredients’ are always maintained and topped up.

I’m admittedly not as conscientious about the environment as I should be in many other areas but I am frugal when it comes to food.

I used to live with a girl who scrupulously examined the sides of cans and the packets, seeking out the sell by date and then, if the food was so much as nearing it’s best before, she would through it straight into the bin.

Where I could I would then rescue the food minutes later and became quite happy with my new found supply of free milk, beans, cakes, biscuits etc but still found her wasteful habits extremely irritating.

I was taught to scrape the mould off jam, cut it out of bread - generally just live by the rule that if it smells alright it should taste alright.

Obviously there are a few food matters that I am a little more suspicious of. Chicken for example, if left sitting around probably ain’t so great but again, my Mum always reminded us that it is pretty difficult to give yourself food poisoning. Chances are you would notice something tasting a bit funny a few bites in.

I don’t know, I think it all just stems down to common sense really.

Taking inspiration from my Grandma, my Mum and my wasteful old flatmate I want to devise a way to encourage people to make use of leftover food, become aware of waste and to use their common sense.

A date on the side of a can should be seen as more of an insurance policy rather than law. We have the power of our senses, we should trust them.

“Grandma doesn’t like waste” FACT. There are nearly one billion malnourished people in the world, but the approximately 40 million tonnes of food wasted by US households, retailers and food services each year would be enough to satisfy the hunger of every one of them.

MY IDEA

INITIAL IDEAS: I want to tackle the subject of food waste. I aim to bring awareness to the general public, shops and businesses about how much food is wasted and what could be done about it. Through this process I will learn people’s views on the food they waste. Understand why so much food is wasted and see if there is anything that can be done to prevent it in the future.

I will learn about what is currently being done to tackle this issue by reading news stories, researching existing organisations and contacting local charities. I hope that through this process I will broaden my own knowledge of the issues faced and I look forward to discovering how I feel by the end of my research. What will I do to actively stop waste on top of my current efforts. Can I do more? Will I do more?

MY APPROACH: I am going to set up a food swap. I am going to ask the general public to route through their cupboards and fridges and see what their weekly wastage is. After this, I will get them to donate their food to the cause and encourage them to swap, share and save food wastage.

HOW I AM GOING TO DO IT: I will create an event on Facebook, print flyers and posters, find a location and spread the word.

WHO WILL I ASK: People of Bristol, students, friends, peers. Shops, local businesses, supermarkets.

PROBLEMS I MIGHT FACE: What if no one takes part? What if shops and supermarkets say no to donating? What if I have food left after the event, will that then be wasted?

HOW I WILL OVERCOME THESE PROBLEMS: I need to find an alternative for any food that is left behind at the end of the day. I don’t want to be creating more waste by gathering so much food together, there has to be somewhere for it to go. I have chosen to concentrate on preventing food being wasted, rather than any larger ‘stop hunger’ related themes. However, if food is left over I will donate it to local charities in order for it to be distributed out to people who are less privileged. If the food needs to be consumed immediately I will take to the streets and

FACT: UK Households waste around 20% of all the food they buy.

EXISTING ORGANISATIONS

FEEDING THE 5000: Feeding the 5000 is a campaign that aims to empower and inspire the global community to enact positive solutions to the global issue of food waste. We work with governments, businesses and civil society at the international level to catalyse change in social attitudes and innovative solutions necessary to tackle food waste at the global scale.

Feeding the 5000 is also the name of the campaign’s flagship event where 5000 members of the public are given a delicious free lunch using only ingredients that otherwise would have been wasted. Held twice in Trafalgar Square (2009 and 2011), replica events have since been held internationally - including in Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin – and will be rolled out worldwide.

TRUSSELL TRUST - FOODBANKS: Every day people in the UK go hungry for reasons ranging from redundancy to receiving an unexpected bill on a low income. Trussell Trust foodbanks provide a minimum of three days emergency food and support to people experiencing crisis in the UK. In 2012-13 foodbanks fed 346,992 people nationwide. Of those helped, 126,889 were children. Rising costs of food and fuel combined with static income, high unemployment and changes to benefits are causing more and more people to come to foodbanks for help.

The Trussell Trust partners with churches and communities to open new foodbanks nationwide. With almost 400 foodbanks currently launched, our goal is for every town to have one

FOODCYCLE: Our mission is to build communities all over the UK by combining volunteers, surplus food and spare kitchen spaces to create tasty, nutritious meals for people at risk of food poverty and social isolation.

We have two programmes that combine surplus food and the energy of our amazing volunteers to create delicious and healthy three-course meals for people in the community. The people we work with and support come from many different walks of life.

FARESHARE: FareShare is a national UK charity supporting communities to relieve food poverty. FareShare is at the centre of two of the most urgent issues that face the UK: food poverty and food waste.

The charity addresses these issues in three ways: Providing quality food - surplus ‘fit for purpose’ product from the food and drink industry – to organisations working with disadvantaged people in the community Providing training and education around the essential life skills of safe food preparation and nutrition, and warehouse employability training through FareShare’s Skills Training programme Promoting the message that ‘No Good Food Should Be Wasted’

AND WASTE NOT WANT CHUTNEY.

A CHAT WITH LUKE - FOODCYCLE

Through word of mouth and general discussion about my project I was advised by several of my peers who had links to friends who were actively part of FoodCycle and Fairshare and other small business schemes, to contact a guy called Luke Purdye.

Luke, originally from Hereford, joined up with FoodCycle whilst he was a student in Bristol. He helped in running The FoodCycle Restaurant in Coexist which is run from Hamilton House, in Stokes Croft.

I contacted Luke via Facebook with a series of questions but he was eager to talk in depth and so encouraged me to give him a call and we had a lengthy discussion about his involvement in FoodCycle and his new business venture ‘Waste Not Want Chutney’.

Luke was a delight to talk to and conversation flowed easily as he perfectly articulated his ideas and achievements without preaching or pressuring any heavy opinion. He even held his reserve when referencing Tesco and their new found ethical empowerment and just laughed that even if they are taking vows of waste prevention as part of a PR benefiting scheme it is ‘irrelevant’ and that ‘the fact that they’re even highlighting the issue is pretty amazing’.

Luke helped run the FoodCycle restaurant, which was targeted at students but he said that they welcomed anyone. ‘We tried to involve the whole community, spreading ideas of food sustainability and anyone was able to come along’. The event happened every three weeks or so and consisted of a three course meal made up largely of food surplus gathered from shops. He told me that the events were meant to be good fun and everyone had a good time. ‘We had DJs, magicians, all sorts. You know, it was good’. The prices of the meals range from £3 - £6 which in my opinion is extremely good value, regardless of whether the ingredients were free or not.

He said ‘it was great, you’d get these girls there who used to shy away from any food that had surpassed it’s sell by date by any more than an hour - straight into the bin - yet here they were eating these meals’. He encouraged me that it doesn’t take much to win people round but admitted that ‘if they’d been taken into the kitchen and seen what it was they were eating, yeah it might have put them off. Some of the food was spoiled, you know but even food that is a little bit dry or a little bit squidgy is still edible - just cut away that bit!’

The FoodCycle restaurant acts as a fund-raiser for FoodCycle which needs to find ways to fund it’s community kitchen, set up in Easton, which is free and offers meals to those in need. They need fund raising schemes and donations to cover these mealtime setups and the insurance that is required do them.

I asked Luke whether he cooks as part of FoodCycle

and whether volunteers had to have food handling certificates or any other government checks before they could sign up to be chefs.

‘Oh yeah everyone had to have Food Safety Level 1, the managers had Level 2’.

Luke then went on to discuss what he has done since FoodCycle.

‘Each year there are changes within the comity.

Because we are students people move on and I got the funding to make a start on a social enterprise of my own’.

Luke applied to Enternships who give money to budding entrepreneurs to aid them in the set up of businesses.

He had to pitch his idea to them in the hope that they, and Unltd, would offer him a grant. ‘I received £1000, which I think is the maximum. I had to write a proposal for them and they offered me the money. It is an entrepreneurial idea that has social benefit’.

Luke’s idea was to start a business making preserves.

‘We were doing a good job (at FoodCycle) of tackling surplus but the events I was part of were only every three weeks and so much was still being wasted in between’. Luke began to draw out ideas and inspiration from the problems he was facing through FoodCycle. ‘(Making preserves) is a way of halting the decay process - a way of preventing all of the energy and water used to produce, grow, harvest, store and transport from being wasted’.

Luke gathers surplus from markets like St Philips wholesale market in Bristol to use as his ingredients.

‘Obviously the contribution is small, but it adds up’.

‘Did you know it takes something ridiculous like 60 litres of water for just one apple? Don’t quote me on that, I might be wrong but it’s something obscene’. He then uses this ingredients to make his chutneys which he is looking to sell on to local businesses. Shops and cafes in and around Bristol have shown an interest in his product, now he just needs to perfect his recipe.

‘I didn’t really realise that people immediately associate chutney with the WI. I hadn’t really looked at it like that. But what is quite nice is that I hope to recruit old ladies - well, not just old ladies - to impart their knowledge in exchange for a donation to a charity of their choice’.

‘I thought I was a reasonably good cook but I was struggling to get the recipe to a standard that I wanted on a large scale. You have to be consistent - I didn’t want to create waste in the process’.

Although I am sure Luke’s chutneys are delicious I agree that his including of others into his scheme adds a new dynamic to the enterprise. He is recruiting

members of Avon WI to volunteer recipes to him and he hopes that they will get some enjoyment out of doing so. As well as a feeling of do-gooding after the money is donated to their chosen charity. If I was a little old lady with an ancient chutney recipe I would be more than happy to pass on some wisdom to a young man doing a good deed for society.

We went on to chat about the logistics of his business and how it works. I questioned him on the legal implications working with surplus foods have. He filled me in on some of the processes and forms that he has to go through in order to make the product viable.

‘If anyone got ill from eating your product and you weren’t properly covered you could get in a lot of trouble and have to pay a lot of money. There is a critical point list - a hazard list I suppose - a very strict protocol’.

Luke writes up his protocol independently and produces it on demand. It’s his own insurance policy but it allows businesses to be fully aware of the process the chutneys undertake before agreeing to the distribution of them.

‘Wholesalers don’t really mind at all, it’s the retailers.

They want product liability insurance and for me to show awareness or have been vetted by the council…

I thought that would be a really big pitfall but actually people are pretty alright about it. You just have to be really on it with your hygiene basically’.

I was impressed with his attitude towards food waste and his positive ambition to do his bit. I really hope people support his business and I will make sure to purchase his chutneys if I ever see them on the shop shelves. He encouraged me to continue to pursue my personal quest to stop waste and share food and we finished the conversation with another mildly cynical quip about Tesco.

‘They’re doing this big campaign to stop waste and it’s like, well stop using all this psychological manipulation to get people to buy extra food then! That’s why everyone’s got all this bloody leftover salmon!’

An interview by Esme Rees with Luke Purdye founder of ‘Waste Not Want Chutney’.

NEXT STEPS I devised a survey to collate information on people’s weekly food wastage.

Whether they are aware of it and if so, how much they care.

The results found that the majority of people find they throw out food every week. They don’t get a chance to it, it goes off, they don’t need it etc.

It was encouraging to see that many people see sell by dates as merely a guideline and are prepared to rely on their sense of smell, sight and their initiative to determine whether food is still edible.

However, there were still people who would throw away food by the sell by date regardless of whether or not it smelt and looked fine.

Almost everyone said that they would be interested in finding ways to swap or share food in order to save money and waste. The only people who were against the idea of swapping food were those with specific dietary needs who didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of eating other people’s food.

My next step is to organised the Food Swap. I have chosen to first tackle groups of students who would be keen to save money to see whether the idea works amongst small communities of people. I will use my University campus as the central trading point and will put up posters and flyers advertising the event.

Poster for STOP WASTE, SHARE FOOD printed using a Risograph.

Initially I was going to print the letters by hand using potatoes. Unfortunately, no potatoes were being wasted at the time so I chose this typeface and method to emulate potato printing.

I will also post facts about food waste around the University and even in Bristol in the hope that it raises awareness of the cost of wasting food and encourages people to attend the swap.

FACT. The UK, US and Europe have nearly twice as much food as is required by the nutritional needs of their populations. Up to half the entire food supply is wasted between the farm and the fork. If crops wastefully fed to livestock are included, European countries have more than three times more food than they need, while the US has around four times more food than is needed, and up to three-quarters of the nutritional value is lost before it reaches people’s mouths.

“I wanted to bring something, but I’m a student I can’t afford to waste food!”

RESPONSE - STUDENTS

I set up an event on Facebook because I thought this was the best way to access a large number of students at once. I also printed posters and stuck them up on campus and places that students would have been likely to see it - on the bus route, in shops and in halls of residence.

The response to the idea was all positive. People really responded to the idea, they agreed with the cause and wanted to take part but when it came to the day there were really very few donations. I was disappointed by the turn out but after speaking to students about why it was that they didn’t contribute I found that the general consensus was that they simply just didn’t have anything to give.

Obviously, there were people who just forgot - it came at a time when many students were busy rushing around for deadlines and their priorities were with their own work. But I do get the impression that actually, students aren’t the biggest wasters out there. So, it was time to tackle a different demographic.

IN THE NEWS - TESCO

Tesco have hit the news recently after they have admitted to wasting almost 30, 000 tons of food in the first 6 months of this year. This is a colossal amount, as people had suspected and vows have been made for them to change.

“...more than two-thirds of produce grown for bagged salads, just under half of bakery goods and four out of 10 of apples are thrown away”.

- The Independent After this shocking revelation Tesco have promised to do what they can to prevent food waste and now have schemes in place encouraging shoppers to buy extra items on top of their food shop which they can donate to charity on their way out of the shop. This is a great idea for the welfare of the less fortunate, but what about food that just simply doesn’t sell?

‘The company said it was changing its sales tactics in a bid to reduce household waste, by ending multi-buy offers on large bags of salad and removing “display until” dates from fresh fruit and vegetables.

It will also rearrange 600 in-store bakeries to reduce the amount of bread on display and improve stock control’. A quotation from a recent article in The Independent.

This is a promising start, I wonder whether this vow to prevent waste will alter their attitude towards skipping, somehow I doubt that. Can you really see Tesco allowing people to trawl through their bins at night?

I would like to investigate this matter further.

You can read about Tesco’s new campaign ‘Using our scale for good’ on their website. They have also set up a site for helpful ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ recipes. Although I struggle to believe that ‘leftover beef pastrami bagels’ are going to be top of the ideal recipes for waste list. You only get about 5 slices of pastrami in a packet, it’s expensive and I’m pretty sure it isn’t up their on the list of top items of food found rotting in people fridges. But there we are.

Figures from their own website say that a fifth of bananas are thrown away, why not give us recipes for a good banana cake, or banana jam or chutney or something useful? That’s what I would do. In fact, that’s probably what I will do.

“...by working with our producers and suppliers and helping the customers we serve to find ways to reduce food waste.�

“Free food? Are you a saint?”

I decided to host my event again and open it up to the general public. I set about promoting the event and once again the feedback was really positive I got in touch with a lady I worked for earlier this year because she is in the Festival business and I know she had links with Fairshare. She was really pleased to hear about my involvement with the cause and shared the event on Facebook encouraging people to come down.

I had a number of people share the event, from various walks of life and people seemed to really take to the project. I was pleased to see the range of people who reacted to the idea and it was encouraging to discover more people who felt that there needed to be a change in the attitude towards waste.

Just some of the food donated by local shops and businesses

After not having much turn out at the student set up I decided it would be wise to ask around local shops and businesses prior to the event and see if they had anything to offer. After the on campus shop and canteen had so point blankly refused I was not feeling very hopeful but I decided to have a wander up Gloucester Road anyway.

Gloucester Road, being the longest stretch of independent shops in the UK, was an obvious choice. However, I was taken back by how many people were actually willing to donate! I was swamped. So much so that I couldn’t carry everything home. I managed to carry six bags full of food back to my house just from one trip. Had I known the response was going to be so positive I would have borrowed a friend with a car to help me!

“Hi Esme, great idea, sorry l can’t be there but would love to know how it goes”.

“THIS SATURDAY! Something rather cool is happening at The Canteen!”

“Great idea!!”

FOOD DONATIONS The bakers gave me two bags full of iced buns and cakes.

The student’s grocery shop gave me a bag full of green peppers, green beans and a bag of bananas.

The Health Food shop gave me a packet of veggie sausages, bread, yoghurt and cream.

The Olive Shop were really friendly, the girl behind the counter said she was part of FoodCycle and regularly cooked at their events and she encouraged me to sign up. She gave me a big tub full of feta and spinach filo which was delicious and said that they waste as little as possible.

The donations continued as I walked up Gloucester Road and then I came to Co-op. Not feeling very hopeful I approached the man behind the counter - ‘My boss would be really into this!’ He exclaimed, to my surprise.

‘Come back tomorrow though because he isn’t in at the moment’.

Unfortunately, I am yet to testify whether or not he really would be into the idea as I didn’t have time before setting up on Saturday to make any extended trips. I do plan to contact Co-op for my own personal research in the near future.

The same was said for Tesco. I bought up as much of their reduced section as I could - some of the bread was down to as little as six pence! But, the woman in charge that day said she couldn’t issue a statement until her manager was in. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be until after the event and although the lady working that day seemed to think her manager would be willing to donate food I am still dubious. I will be contacting Tesco next week to see what they have to say on the matter..

As a foot note, Co-op did admit that they do now hide their bins and even the man behind the counter said he didn’t know where they are kept. This makes me question whether his boss really would have been as ‘into the idea’ as he made out. Surely,, if you want to prevent food waste, you will turn a blind eye to a mild bit of skipping. Not lock up your bins so their even out of the reach of your own employees, no?

THE EVENT - THE CANTEEN I was really pleased to be allowed to set up space in the midst of Stokes Croft at one of my favourite daytime bars. The Canteen. Ben, the manager said he thought it was a really food idea and was more than happy to house me for the day. So, I bought my box of food and had an enjoyable afternoon chatting to people, sharing food and accepting donations. I only wish I had thought of a better way to record people’s responses as a lot of them were very positive.

Two young women said they thought that the fact I had done this on my own was very admirable, they were aware of the other larger organisations but said it was really impressive that I had set it all up and come down here completely off my own back. This was a big compliment and I was pleased that I had made an impact on their day. They took some apples to make jam and said that they had been encouraged to make a difference themselves and would set about getting in touch with people.

The good feedback continued throughout the day and I only had two cases of people being unpleasant, both of which came from men who were drunk and removed from the vicinity shortly afterwards.

One lady in particular struck me as being particularly grateful. I didn’t press anyone to divulge information about themselves but this one lady did tell me that she was really genuinely thankful that she now had something to take home for her dinner. She seemed so touched by the offerings that I was quite moved and really felt as though I had made a positive imprint on her day.

By 6.00 in the evening all the food from the table was gone, we’d had a few offerings but the majority of people were just there to take food. There were some money donations made and one man was generous enough to gave me £10 which I was very pleased to receive. After chatting to Luke and the other kind FoodCycle links that I have met along the way I have decided that they will be the receivers of this money. I am happy that I am able to offer this to them.

I think that if I am to run future events like this one I will need to push promotion harder in order to get people to be 100% on board. Everyone starts with the best intentions and plenty of people had said they would turn out for it but realistically, people do forget or they have other things to do and their priorities shift.

That being said, I am glad that people were able to come up and chat to me about the issues I was covering and I feel like those people that I met understood what it was that I was doing and were grateful for the food I was giving away. I can rest easy at the thought that I have made a small difference in the world.

NEXT STEPS

Whilst I was running the event at The Canteen I was approached by one of the chefs who asked me to wait to speak to him about a proposal he had for me.

Unfortunately he wasn’t finishing work until late and was too busy to talk to me then but he says he wanted to go over some schemes to prevent waste in their kitchen.

I intend to meet up with him next week and discuss these ideas further.

I will return to Co-op and Tesco this week to see whether or not they were being realistic with their claims that their managers would be willing to donate food to a cause like mine.

I will try to obtain free food by asking businesses to allow me to take any surplus from that day.

I will also try to obtain surplus food to donate charities.

I will try my hand and a bit of bin raiding.

I will contact FoodCycle and find out when their next event is.

I will sign up to Feeding the 5000 and try and get a certificate to allow me to volunteer as a cook there.

Esme Rees RSA Collaborative Consumption