3 February 2022
“It’s about saving food and building community,” says Kathryn Bowman from South Liverpool Zero Waste Community. “Our project is about food dignity, not food poverty, and we thank people for taking the food.”
South Liverpool Zero Waste Community supports people in the community by providing food bags each week, which they advertise through their Facebook page. Anyone can apply for a bag and can then collect it from a local pick up point.
“We don’t take any money,” explains Kathryn. “We just ask that people pay it forward instead, so people have done things like litter picking or made donations to other local charities.”
The team collects surplus food every week from Tesco and Booker through FareShare Go, which is then sorted into categories and put into bags so that people collecting all receive similar products.
Kathryn continues: “The staff know us at the stores now, so we’re building relationships. It’s the same people picking up on the same days, so the store community champions have asked us to be their charity. They’ve also offered us extra items too, which is great as we’ve got a good reputation that we can redistribute very quickly.
“We redistribute all the food back into the community, which equates to between 45 and 55 bags of food to families every day. We’re also asking people to only book one per week so that there’s enough to go round.
“We’re saving food from landfill and building community locally, as well as within ourselves as a team. For our volunteers, it gives them a purpose and a sense of belonging.”
Alongside providing food parcels, the team provide further support for the local community as required. “There’s a couple moving house soon and we’re all helping them move; someone else had a baby recently so we gave them meals for a week,” adds Kathryn.
“We help a lot of people – one thing I’ll always remember is a woman who turned down by three food pantries because her postcode was wrong – if she needs food, we’ll give it.
“We get lots of lovely messages from people and a lot of our volunteers started off collecting food from us and then signed up to volunteer with us.”
Recently, the group had an exciting visitor – Lizzie Acker from the Great British Bake Off – who surprised the team by whipping up a special treat using some of the food they had rescued.
“Lizzie took some of the food we had rescued and then came back in the evening – she had made a cake with it and surprised us,” explains Kathryn. “She’d made a parsnip and turnip cake, which sounds horrible but it was lovely. There was a big queue outside that day and everyone was excited to try it.”
Lizzie was equally enthusiatic about her visit, saying: “I love what they’re doing within our community by saving food from landfill. There’s a domino effect within our community of people using the food to share with others or donate to charity. It really highlights the caring spirit of Liverpool, and on a larger scale it’s helping the environment.”
Lizzie Acker visits with a tasty way to use surplus veg
