4 minute read
Fighting the good fight
Fighting The Good Fight
Adam Walsh visits the York based charities run by volunteers who battle against food waste in order to feed those who need it most.
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York is one of England’s biggest tourist attractions, a city with a vast and fascinating history rich in beautiful architecture. However, we have a problem with homelessness, a problem with pollution and a problem with food waste. Across the UK roughly three million tonnes of food is sent to a landfill each year despite still being perfectly edible, and York is no better. This has to stop.
Across York there are people trying to fight this problem by redistributing food throughout the city to help ensure that it doesn’t go to waste and that people don’t go hungry. This is essential and time consuming work. The network of volunteers who make this possible are incredibly important for the people in need around the city.
These groups work hard, but need help. In the words of Ruth Jennaway from Edible York: “It’s worth getting the message out.”
These groups need to get information out to make the system function. The challenge for them is that word of mouth is often the only way for people to find out where and when different food kitchens and community schemes are operating.
In just 18 months, Hoping York Kitchen has been able to build a network that reaches across the entire city. They set up shop, so to speak, in King’s square every Wednesday and Sunday. People can turn up and get a hot meal and drink, some conversation and as much food as they need to take away with them.
Overcoming this challenge is the real task alongside connecting with businesses that can provide the food. Hoping York Kitchen has been able to connect with the head offices of Greggs and Co-op in addition to receiving donations constantly from the people of York. These come in the form of money, food and clothes.
It has been no small task either, the level of commitment from the core set of volunteers for Hoping York Kitchen is extraordinary. Most of the managing team are in full time employment and have children as well; they simply find the time to become this essential lifeline to so many people around York.
When I visited the kitchen to see it in action, there was a real sense of community as all the volunteers got set up and got going and plenty of visitors helped as well. While there was some ‐ not much
The forgotten orchards of York
Edible York is a charity that has been operating for quite some time. It became a registered charity in 2014 and works across the city area, aiming “to make York a better place to live by running edible gardening activities and horticultural initiatives”.
I speak to Ruth and Louise from the organisation about how food waste that is still edible is moved around the city and how easy it is to work with larger chains and companies.
Last year they started an Edible York initiative called Abundance, through which a group of volunteers collect and redistribute fresh and, more importantly, edible apples.
“A logistical exercise in joining the dots,” is how Ruth Jennaway first describes to me the effort that is required to make a project like Abundance work. There are plenty of people at different levels of the food disposal and redistribution chain across the city, but many aren’t as connected as they could be.
There are numerous orchards from which these apples can be collected and they aim to maintain a green distribution network, keeping to cyclists, pedestrians and people who have pre-planned car trips on the delivery rota. When I speak to Louise for this piece, she happens to be collecting apples on what must be one of the last runs of the year and she hurries to get on with her job.
Technology the saviour?
For those people who are not necessarily desperate for food, but do want to save money and the planet, there are other ways to help stop edible food ending up in a landfill. You could set up your own group dedicated to helping people, or even make smaller contributions within your day-to-day life.
The app Too Good to Go is one way of becoming aware of food that is available from restaurants and is going to be disposed of. Sadly in York, when you see the map pop up on your phone, there is only one restaurant on the app, Yo Sushi! This means that all of the the options are based in Leeds.
As the hospitality and catering sector is responsible for around a million tonnes of edible food waste each year, according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) 2015 report, there is clearly a long way to go with this. While there may be a more extensive network of restaurants in other cities providing this service, it remains underwhelming within the shadow of York Minster.
It is clear that despite the curse of social media it is an excellent way to connect and organise people in groups. The Abundance project had an impressive boost in apple collection, over “60 crates”, as soon as it upped its presence on social media. For Hoping York Kitchen social media is essential and it has really helped to build their reach, as Lisa Price says: “We use Facebook as our platform massively.”
York has now become a part of the Sustainable Food Cities Network; a group of cities recognising the importance of food in dealing with many of modern societies issues; it is perhaps the perfect time to be amping up the level of interconnectivity between volunteer and charity groups working to help people in need and fight the food waste crisis at the same time.
