Onions (front) and Coriander leaf donated on 6th December 2011.

December 2011 saw the first full month of the avoidable food waste pilot up at New Smithfield Market. FareShare has been accepting donated fresh food from New Smithfield Traders, sorting it and sending it out to Community Food Members, with the remainder going over to Fairfield Materials Management for composting/pig feed.

Earlier posts on this blog mentioned mangoes, avocados and peppers that were received, but we now have some figures to share on exactly how much food we’ve received and what FareShare accepted after sorting.

The results demonstrate how important this project is. Its important in terms of capturing avoidable food waste and sending it out to organisations that work with people in food poverty as it enables those organisations to make any funds they have go further.  From a climate change perspective the volumes are significant.

Footprint Consulting calculate that reducing food waste by 1 kg saves 4.5 kg of CO2e while composting 1 kg of food instead of landfilling it saves 0.45 CO2e.

As all food waste on New Smithfield goes to Fairfield for processing (i.e. is not landfilled) any food captured by FareShare represents a saving of 4.05 kg of CO2e.

In the first full month FareShare received 6395.7 kg of food from NSM traders (or 6.395 tonnes)

After sorting FareShare accepted 2368.5 kg (or 2.368 tonnes)

This means that 34.7% of the food dropped off, which would previously have gone straight to composting, was edible.

In terms of carbon savings, that’s 9,592 kg of CO2e saved (Just over nine and a half tonnes).

As we get a better understanding of the volumes being donated we are looking to process surplus food, which cannot be sent out through the FareShare network quickly enough, or food which needs further trimming but which is perfectly good to cook with if used quickly.  We will let you know how we get on in future posts.

*The pilot is part of a FareShare North West project funded by Manchester City Council. We are working in partnership with Manchester Markets and Food Futures to address avoidable food waste on New Smithfield Wholesale Market.

Debbie Ellen

Donations  started to come through in the last two weeks and include coriander leaf, mangos, onions, avocados, peppers and lettuce.

The carbon footprint of these foods is significant.  Herbs like coriander are often flown into the UK, especially in December so any use that can be made of this by FareShare community food members (CFM) is a carbon saving.

The mangos have been well received by CFM.  We are collecting information about what different organisations did with this fruit and will post news about this on the blog as it arrives.  The fruit were grown in Brazil and we had a donation of 800 kilos of them, in tip top condition. They are ripe so need dispatching quickly but if FareShare was not here this food would have either been composted or fed to animals. The photos help give an idea of how many mangos this equates to, as its hard to visualise such a large quantity.

After the arrival of the wonderful tropical fruit we had 300 kilos of onions.  These came in sacks and it was obvious that some were rotten.  After a couple of hours of sorting there were 170 kilos of onions suitable to send out to CFMs.

Today we have also received trays of iceberg lettuce, more onions, yellow peppers and a very tall pallet of Hass avocados which were grown in Chile.

These recent donations from traders are very encouraging and we look forward to receiving more food in the coming weeks as the market gears up for Christmas.

* This new system is part of a FareShare North West project funded by Manchester City Council. We are working in partnership with Manchester Markets and Food Futures to address avoidable food waste on New Smithfield Wholesale Market. FareShare volunteers sort the food and any in good condition is sent out to Community Food Members. The remainder is processed by Fairfield Materials Management (composted or used for animal feed).

Debbie Ellen

We will be working with Food Futures and Manchester Markets on a project that:

• Captures food which is perfectly good to eat before it is sent for composting by the on-site service run by Fairfield Materials Management
• Addresses food poverty and improves access to food to those most at risk of a poor diet, by making this food available to FareShare’s Community food members.

The work forms part of the commitment to reduce the environmental impact of food through the city’s Climate Change Action Plan – Manchester – A Certain Future.

Avoidable Food waste makes a significant contribution to the carbon footprint of individuals, organisations and businesses. Addressing this is FareShare’s core business. Since opening the depot on New Smithfield Market in 2008 FareShare has been aware that there was potential to capture fresh produce from market traders for distribution through our network but lacked the capacity to develop working relationships with the traders on the market to enable this to happen.  The funding provided by Manchester City Council allows this work to happen.

Our long term objective is to offer this food through FareShare and develop other work in the local community on cooking from fresh ingredients, building on the work already done by projects like the lottery funded Community Food Co-Ordinators and the Love Food Hate Waste sessions EMERGE Food has run, funded by WRAP. Both these projects have shown that there is both a need for more cookery sessions locally and that such work enables people to change their diet, cooking for themselves rather than relying on takeaways and ready meals.

Our idea is to establish an onsite kitchen up at New Smithfield Market where sessions can be offered and donated food from the traders can be used to demonstrate how to make healthy nutritious meals. This work will require funding, and the work we will be doing over the coming months will contribute to funding bids that we submit.

Why is this important?

We need to divert edible food from composting so that it can be eaten.  This principle is illustrated by the American food recovery hierarchy. FareShare sits within the feed hungry people part of the hierarchy.

If you’d like to hear about our progress then follow this blog so that you are notified about future posts.

Debbie Ellen

An Abundance Manchester volunteer hard at work

This is either because their owners aren’t able to pick them, don’t want to eat the fruit or there is simply too much fruit for them to consume themselves. This is where projects which pick and distribute unwanted fruit become important. Currently there are two such projects in Greater Manchester, Abundance Manchester and Abundance Trafford (the younger of the two).

Abundance Trafford started last year and we’re still only small. We pick unwanted fruit in Old Trafford, Stretford and Urmston areas of Trafford and distribute the fruit to organisations that work with people in food poverty. It’s enjoyable, satisfying work, but coping with both picking and distribution is time consuming, especially when you try to do it without using vehicles, to minimise the carbon impact of the work.

That’s why working with FareShare is such a boon. Recently we picked about 35 kg of apples from two trees in Stretford. The apples were cookers, which are harder to give away in volume than eating apples, as some organisations are not able to deal with lots of them. So, we had bags of apples sitting in our living room – where to take them?

I rang FareShare, as I knew that some of their community food members (CFM) are based in Old Trafford, to see whether they were going to be delivering in the area in the near future. They said they could collect the apples within a couple of hours, as they were dropping off a delivery locally. This was fantastic, FareShare can deliver smaller quantities of the lovely apples to some of its 35 different CFM as part of a weekly food delivery.

This sort of partnership, with Abundance Trafford picking the fruit and FareShare distributing it means that Abundance Trafford can pick more fruit, safe in the knowledge that it can be widely distributed and FareShare is dropping off and picking up food in the same trip: maximising use of the vehicle.

If you’d like to help us pick, or have a tree in need of picking please contact us

Debbie Ellen