FOOD CYCLE
Surplus food occurs when the supply of food exceeds the demand for it. There is many ways and reasons this can happen; overproduction, food imperfection/off cuts, past best before date and damaged packaging.
Figures provided by waste and resources charity WRAP and The Worldwide Fund, show the scale of the problem of food wastage in the UK.
- Annual food waste within UK households, hospitality and food service, food manufacture, retail and wholesale sectors in 2015 was estimated at around 9.5 million tonnes.
- This had an equivalent value of £19 billion a year
- A further 3 million edible tonnes is estimated to be wasted on UK farms every year. That’s another £1.8 billion a year
- With around 43 million tonnes of food purchased in the UK, the amount of food wasted is just over a fifth
- By weight, household waste makes up a whopping 70 per cent of all food wasted in the UK
ByWaters FoodCycle
FoodCycle is a community initiative that uses surplus food to create free three course meals for the hungry and the lonely across England. They currently run 41 projects, serving 1,500 guests a week – and over the last 10 years they have turned 425 tonnes of surplus food into more than one million free meals. On top of this, every meal cooked by FoodCycle is vegetarian, ensuring that all their guests have a nutritious, healthy meal.
With many people struggling across the country, FoodCycle provides an essential service to many people who may be socially isolated and suffering from loneliness or may not have enough money to afford food. People have said;
“I’m homeless and thanks to this place I’m starting to feel like a human, not as a zero.”
“I really look forward to it every week. I love eating together at the same table as friends I have made here. We have become like a little family; it is very comforting.”
“It really helps my mental health and helps with money so I can keep the heating on a bit longer to keep warm.”
A man with health problems who has had his Universal Credit stopped said “If it wasn’t for these places, I wouldn’t eat in the week,” and an older woman who lives alone and often goes days without speaking to another person.
These accounts are often heartbreaking, and demonstrate why the work FoodCycle does is so important: it’s a charity that has definitely saved lives.
We need to do our bit to reduce food waste, while at the same time ensuing the surplus food goes to people who need it the most.
By using surplus food to cook all their meals, FoodCycle are not only supporting thousands of people throughout the country, but also saving tonnes of harmful carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere. When people think about the threat of global warming, they don’t often think about food waste, but it is actually one of the biggest environmental problems facing the world.
Each year 10 million tonnes of food is thrown away in the UK, and food waste accounts for 8% of the world’s annual emissions of greenhouse gasses –meaning that if food waste was a country, it would be the third most polluting nation on earth.
The café – the first of its kind in Northern Ireland – is run by Ballycastle Community Hub. Located within the grounds of Ballycastle garden centre on Castle Street, it provides a selection of hot meals and home-baked goods, with the menu varying depending on the food that has been donated.
Ballycastle Community Cafe
The initiative spun out of the community fridge programme, which allows people to share fresh food to save it from going to waste. This surplus food can come from supermarkets, local food businesses, producers, households and gardens.