Covid 19 - Our Response
Here at Aber Food Surplus our work has always been centred around taking positive action and bringing people together in our local community to reduce food waste and share food. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, crisis and pandemic we have had to take a step back and rethink how we do things. Last week, we decided to close the ECO Food Sharing Hub and Community Fridge space to keep our community safe and reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19.
This doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any food waste. Far from it.
In the past week we have seen food waste on an unprecedented scale; in one night we collected 600+ loaves of bread. We are receiving daily requests from supermarkets to collect their surplus food (the majority which is bread and bakery products - the most common type of food waste we see) and daily messages from people asking when the Hub is going to be open.
This raises some interesting and important questions, why are people worried about food shortages when there are extreme levels of food waste happening? And what are we going to do about it?
We think we are seeing an increase in the amount of food waste because supermarkets have restocked and over-stocked in reaction to people panic-buying over the last few weeks and now fewer people are out buying food. The uproar of empty shelves also led the government to encourage supermarkets to keep shelves stocked, rather than encouraging citizens to be more resourceful with their food.
So, what are we doing at Aber Food Surplus and are we going to be doing anything differently?
Our main aim here at Aber Food Surplus is to reduce food waste by ensuring this valuable food is fed to people. We believe in taking positive short-term action whilst raising wider systemic issues and talking about them in a constructive, inclusive and meaningful way to bring about longer-term change. COVID-19 has demonstrated even further that we need a more resilient, regenerative and empowering food system that is fit for everyone.
These are exceptional times and we have a responsibility as a community organisation, and a shared responsibility as a collective of global citizens, to do the best we can and take positive action.
That is why we will continue trying our best to ensure this food is eaten by:
resuming collections and redistributions of surplus food from Monday 6th April
the food will be available for anyone and everyone
We will continue to work with our community networks and organisations to ensure food is fed to people (if you are an interested community group still operating during this period please let us know)
The Hub will remain closed for now whilst our focus will be on sorting the food for redistribution and deliveries to members of the community.
If you would like to receive this food or know people or groups that could utilise the food, please let us know by booking a delivery online here, or text us on 07742488982. Please feel free to pass on the form, our email address, and our phone number onto anyone you think it may be relevant to. As an environmental organisation, we will be prioritising delivery based on minimal carbon usage.
Please be aware and note as always we have no idea what the food is going to be until the moment we collect it from the supermarkets so we cannot guarantee any particular food stuffs, but encourage you to be creative, swap food with neighbours, batch cook, and freeze - utilising surplus food requires a similar attitude to food growing or eating seasonally.
Moving forward
We will be exploring ways in which the Hub could potentially open on a slot-based system, specific times or other ways it could be used and are looking into other ideas to ensure food waste is reduced and surplus food is made available to people as much as possible - if you have ideas please get involved. Furthermore, many of the ECO Food Sharing Hubs community groups are looking to provide some inspiring content online and looking into ways we can communicate the importance of our food system and how you can contribute in a more digital-centred World, hopefully creating an ‘aber - e hub’. As always, we are continually learning, and if you have any ideas, feedback or suggestions please do get in touch. We hope you join us online soon!
Zero-Food Waste Aberystwyth
In addition, we are still working on a longer-term strategy of a zero-food waste town and something we have been talking about recently is expanding our work to focus on growing food in our local community. We feel like this is a perfect opportunity, the right time and place to be doing this. As we said COVID-19 has demonstrated even further that we need a more resilient, regenerative and empowering food system that is fit for everyone.
So we ask you; what better way to take action than growing your own food?
We hope to be shifting our focus to facilitating and putting this into practice.
Lastly, as we have been told in news and media we are in a crisis, our hearts and thoughts go out to those who have been heavily impacted by COVID-19. Although it may be difficult to consider at the moment, we at Aber Food Surplus believe we are already in a crisis and one which is much more important than COVID-19 – the climate crisis. As an example, air pollution, largely from the burning of fossil fuels kills around 40,000 people every year just in the UK and is one of the World’s biggest killers.
We started Aber Food Surplus in response to the climate crisis. We are as passionate as ever to try our best to take proactive action on this, but it requires a collective responsibility and awakening of thoughtful action. We hope the COVID-19 crisis is a wake-up call and call to action to take what we can learn from it and move forward with a renewed sense of hope, community and love to make the World a better place and tackle the climate crisis.
With love, Fay, Laura, Heather, Chris and Chris x