FareShare UK
Charity
FareShare is the UK’s biggest charity fighting hunger and food waste. We take good-to-eat unsold or unwanted surplus food from across the food industry, sort it in our warehouses across the UK and redistribute it to vulnerable families and individual across the UK, through a network of 10,500 other charities and community groups. We also work directly with farmers, growers and producers to redistribute their good-to-eat surplus produce, rejected for consumer sale for being the wrong shape or size.
Behind The Scenes
Short description:
I lead on strategic communications for FareShare. Food waste is a huge global environmental problem. One-third of food produced for human consumption -- 1.3bn tonnes is wasted globally, when millions around the world are going hungry. Food waste is a huge contributor to global warming. It accounts for up to 10% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s around three times pre-Covid levels of emissions from the aviation industry. If global food waste were one country, it would be the third biggest polluter behind the US and China. But despite this, tackling food waste wasn’t a priority for those leading debate at COP26. It's time to take food waste seriously.
View from your window:
A night time city view of buildings, lights and Christmas decorations.
What's your contribution?
Shaping and leading the debate on tackling food waste. An estimated 2m of the 3.6m tonnes of food wasted across the UK food industry each year is still-good-to-eat when it is discarded. It is often cheaper to let unsold good-to-eat food rot in the ground, use it for animal feed, anaerobic digestion or send it to land fill, than redistribute it. That is why FareShare set up our pioneering Surplus with Purpose scheme in 2019, as part of a government trial to tackle food waste. The scheme helps to cover the extra costs to small-scale farmers, growers and producers of redistributing their good-to-eat waste food, rather than let it rot in the ground, use it for animal feed, or send it to land fill. Surplus with Purpose now accounts for 20,000 tonnes -- more than a third (37%) of the food we redistribute (2020-21) More than 300 companies across the UK are now working with Surplus with Purpose. And our Surplus with Purpose scheme is already being supported by some supermarkets, as an example of best practice -- working with us and their farmers and growers to stop food waste. Surplus with Purpose can help the UK lead the way in stopping food waste. FareShare can help lead the discussion about food waste globally.
What brings you here?
To engage with audiences about the issue of global food waste.
What's the most important?
Engaging with audiences and raising the issue of global food waste.