Free Food

Look around your average supermarket. How much of that food do you think it thrown out when it gets near to its sell-by date? When those mushrooms start to go a bit soft, when there is a crate-full of apples that are a bit bruised, when that cabbage gets a bit floppy. They just get thrown out, and they are still perfectly edible.

I've heard about people who raid supermarket bins for ages now, and they get tons of perfect food for nothing. Now there's a website dedicated to redistributing this waste (but good) food to people who cannot afford enough food for a healthy diet. http://www.fareshare.org.uk/ is the national organisation that works with over 100 food businesses to minimise food waste by providing practical solutions to help ensure that the maximum amount of 'fit for purpose' food is consumed wherever possible.

In 2005 2,000 tonnes of food was saved from being wasted, helping business reduced C02 emissions by 13,000 tonnes. This food was then redistributed, along with other food related support services, to a community food network of 300 organisations. This food contributed to over 3.3 million meals to 12,000 disadvantaged people each day in 34 cities and towns across the UK.

As well as also providing 250 work and volunteers placements last year, £5 million was saved by the network of local charities, which was reinvested into the community.

It is estimated that 4 million people in the UK cannot afford a healthy diet, with 1 in 7 people over 65 at serious risk of malnourishment. I'm glad that someone is doing something about it, but typical that it was an independent organisation that came up with this idea, and not our caring Goveernment.


You may also want to check out http://freegan.info/, a site Dedicated to Revealing Human Over-Consumption and Waste. Freeganism is a total boycott of an economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider. Thus, instead of avoiding the purchase of products from one bad company only to support another, they avoid buying anything to the greatest degree they are able.

Seems to me like they should just have their own allotment and raise their own chickens though? Instead they raid skips and re-use products that we have thrown out, or eat food dumped by supermarkets that is still edible. But ultimately but re-using those GAP combats from the bin, or eating Asda's thrown-out fresh (intensively farmed) chicken legs, they are STILL consuming the foods and using the products produced by the society they disagree with ... however they are helping to reduce waste and sticking two fingers up at our wasteful society at the same time. it's a vicious circle, but if we didn't waste so much in the first place they'd not be doing it....