We are very excited to welcome another exciting project into our Tayport family – a Community Fridge! We asked their Lead Volunteer, Susan Davie, to tell us more about it and how you can get involved.
My name is Susan and I am the lead volunteer at the Tayport Community Fridge. Our project is based in The Larick (Tayport’s Community Centre). At present we are open every Friday 2-5pm and you can visit us in the Otter Room.
A community fridge is a direct way of enabling communities and businesses to share and redistribute food. We receive food from local residents and businesses and are excited to now be the recipients of Fareshare deliveries. Fareshare are the UK’s national network of charitable food redistributors. Every week they provide enough food to create around a million meals. We have no control over what we will receive from them or any of the donations we will receive until the day. This means there is an element of excitement and surprise every week in the team.
We are funded by Fife Council and are part of North East Fifes network of fridges which includes Cupar, Anstruther and Crail. The food we receive into the fridge is good, perfectly edible food that would be classed as waste and otherwise end up as landfill. We can accept food that is over its best before date but not its use by date. The items need to be sealed unless it’s fruit or vegetables.
All the food that comes into the project is weighed so we can track the volume of food waste we are saving from landfill. Food waste is a massive contributing factor in our current climate emergency. Greenhouse gases are increasing and causing the earth’s temperature to rise. This is causing climate change and food is contributing to this by its production, transportation, land, sea and water use. That including food waste all creates huge amounts of GHGs. If we can all use this food rather than waste it we can save a large amount of GHG emissions.
The average household throws away £470 worth of food every year. At the same time 4 million people in the UK are living in food poverty. Community fridges are in essence a mutual aid project. They are a tried and tested method of saving good food from ending up in the bin.
We also often offer eco period products (reusable towels by Bloom and Nora and reusable cups by Unicorn cups) which in turn helps us reduce household waste further and allows people to try these products without the initial monetary constraints.
Our main aim of the project is to combat food waste by redistributing and sharing food within our community. This in turn can help with social inclusion by removing the stigma often attached to food poverty. Our project will also stock toiletries, nappies, incontinence pads, toilet roll, etc for those in need.
The fridge is to be used by everyone and we welcome people of all backgrounds.
We are mostly volunteer run and in order to grow and expand in the way that we wish to we really need and hope to gain a bank of volunteers to work alongside us. Please get in touch if you would like to volunteer with us. Get in touch with me on email susandavie@tayportct.org.uk or call Larick on 07486893215.
Our project is still in its infancy but in the weeks since we started on a small table outside the Larick we’ve seen our user base expand greatly. We really hope that the community fridge continues to grow and helps us drive down food waste in our community. We hope to soon be in the position to bring you some stats to let you know how much food we are saving.
We look forward to welcoming you to your community fridge.
This is such an inspiring and exciting movement and I am delighted to see that Tayport now has its own Community fridge. Many congratulations to all who are involved!