It is “crackers” that food is deemed to be waste just because it has passed its sell-by date, according to London Mayor Boris Johnson.
The Mayor made the comments as he opened a new food depot at Park Royal in North London that will distribute more than 300 tonnes of surplus food a year to charities which would have otherwise ended up in landfill.
The food is donated by a range of manufacturers such a Nestle UK, Gerber Juice, Muller and Kraft. The company also works with retailers such as Sainsbury's and Marks and Spencer and catering companies such as Brakes and Sodexo.
The companies even pay FareShare to take the food off their hands, but FareShare stressed that this was a lot less that it would cost them to dispose of the material. The organisation then redistributes the food to a network of charities who are members, who pay a modest fee in exchange for food and training in areas such as food safety.
Benefit
Organisations that will benefit from the depot include hostels for homeless people, breakfast clubs for children, youth centres, after-school clubs, lunch clubs for elderly people, women's refuges, night shelters, churches, day centres, drop in centres and drug rehabilitation projects.
Mayor Boris Johnson said: “It's completely crackers that food is deemed waste just because it's past its sell by date. But the situation is even worse than that. Three million tonnes of high quality food is being sent to landfill each year. It is an absolute scandal that we waste so much food.”
LWaRB
The LWaRB grant is providing 90% of the funding needed to set up the new food distribution depot and has led to the creation of two jobs and around 50 volunteering opportunities. In addition, the depot is expected to supply 30 charities by the end of the first year, supporting over 6,000 vulnerable people.
Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of FareShare, said: “Thanks to the grant from LWaRB, we are delighted to launch this depot which will ensure that food is diverted away from the waste stream, while providing nutritious meals to vulnerable people in and around London.
“Equally important, it gives companies, as part of their corporate social responsibility, the opportunity to ensure that no good food is wasted, and in addition, gives local people the chance, by volunteering, to get the food into the hands of the people that need it.”
James Cleverly, chairman of the London Waste and Recycling Board, told letsrecycle.com that the £362,000 represented a ‘relatively modest' sum when compared to some of the board's larger funding awards and loans, but said that the benefit was “enormous”.
He said: “It is very rare that you find a project that nails all the elements. And I must stress that this is not just a Christmas project. It is an all year project as food gets chucked away all year.”
Mr Cleverly added that LWaRB was keen to support projects which, like FareShare, could eventually fund themselves or projects which could pay back money in the form of loans. He said this was a good way of leveraging investment from the private sector.
He said: “The London Waste and Recycling Board is not in the business of bank-rolling projects which cannot stand on their own two feet. Some of the other projects we are supporting in the form of loans which helps them to attract finance.”
The FareShare depot is the 15th in the UK and the second in London, after Bermondsey. The network opened a depot in Liverpool in September 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).
And, in August this year, recycling minister Lord Henley visited a FareShare depot in Sunderland where he praised the organisation (see letsrecycle.com story).
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