Local food hub SAVEs more meals than it has hot dinners
On Wednesday, SAVE food hub volunteers saved the 4,000th food item from going to waste since the community group began working in March. The date also marked marked the first occasion of the partnership with Seaton Town Council and local Community Interest Company Re:store as SAVE started working from the Council’s Marshlands building
They collect and share edible, in date food with local food banks, community food projects and local people. Thanks to their efforts, after just five months, Seaton is on the brink of becoming one of Britain’s first towns with near-zero retail food waste.
Set up by local people at the start of lockdown the group rescues what shops and supermarkets have, by law, to throw away. It has expanded rapidly and now makes more than twenty one collections each week from Seaton Coops, Squirrel Seaton and Tesco.
Volunteer Julie, of Harepath Road, Seaton explained “It began with just one person collecting twice a week. Now we have a team of ten trained food collectors working seven days a week. The partnership with the Town Council and Re:store means an accessible, central base where we can distribute food on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. We list it on the sharing app Olio which shows what’s available each evening”.
SAVE food hub sends a great deal of the food it collects to local food banks in Seaton and Axminster but Julie stressed they are not a food bank.
“Our aim is to stop food being thrown away” Julie explained. “In the UK five million tonnes of food is wasted each year. Yet it's perfectly edible! Stores and producers use us to get surplus food to people who can benefit from it before it's wasted. Anyone can request free food from us.... you’re not depriving somebody of a meal....you are helping reduce wasted food!”
When food is disposed of it’s not just the ingredients & packaging that enter the waste stream. A huge amount of energy and water is needed to get your dinner on the table. SAVE food hub have figures showing that the four thousand food items they have rescued over the last five months used a staggering 4.3 million litres of water to grow, manufacture and transport. That’s about the same amount of water as two Olympic sized swimming pools.
Angie, a volunteer from Wychall Park, Seaton explained the group’s name comes both from what they do and an acronym of where they are based. And they are keen to help support the development of similar hubs in neighbouring towns.
"We are always happy to welcome new volunteers" she explained, "So if you’d can spare an hour a week or if you have surplus food to donate please get in touch.”
Angie, laughing, added “We say to people “Taste it, don’t waste it! Dindins, not in Bins!”
If you’d like to know more about what the group does you can reach them on savefoodhub@gmail.com
