What is the role of Surplus Food in our community?

Hello, my name is Heather - a founder of Aber Food Surplus. Aber Food Surplus is project that is designed to bring people in the community together over food, to share conversations, and to co-design a healthier and happier food system for Aberystwyth. We believe that a more sustainable and participatory food system is integral to the wellbeing of people and planet. Here I would like to share a few thoughts on the project, and what I have learnt about the role of surplus food in our community.

I was prompted to write about the role of surplus food in our community for 2 reasons:

Firstly, surplus food, and food waste has an enormous environmental impact due to the linear processes of our food system. We are in a Climate and Ecological Emergency, and the target for a fully circular economy in Wales is 2050, and I believe 30 years is too long away. I want to highlight the achievement of Aber Food Surplus (and the Aberystwyth community) in laying some of the foundations for a circular food system in the last 4 years with less than £200K of funding. This shows how ambitious we can be right now, and how quickly change can happen through collaboration. After all, we are in a climate emergency.

Secondly, the corona virus pandemic has prompted conversations about food poverty - this is not a new problem, and it deserves a more sustainable solution than providing emergency food relief alone. Corona virus will probably be followed by economic recession and climate catastrophe so throwing food waste at the problem won’t make food poverty go away, or tackle waste creation.

1.     Food surplus for working towards a more sustainable and circular food system

We are very passionate about reducing food waste because we find wildlife and our natural environment inspiring, and food waste is polluting this place that we both rely on, and find happiness in. The diagram below shows how Aber Food Surplus save and redistribute food to prevent it from being wasted. As we can see from the diagram, without challenging this linear style food system, all the food redistribution efforts in the world will still allow our food system to encroach into nature and rely on significant and damaging inputs. We need to do more than food redistribution to address the systematic wasting of food and resources!

PS. Eating ugly food won’t save the world either (unless it was grown sustainably)! Read more about that here.

Figure 1. Feedbacks Linear Food System Model. Read more here: https://feedbackglobal.org/building-better-food-system/

We need to work towards a more circular food system, meaning a food system that is stable, and works in tune with wildlife. Aber Food Surplus are facilitating a more circular food system and community participation is enabling food sharing to become a normal part of our lifestyles.

Aber Food Surplus have opened the ECO Food Sharing Hub and community fridge. This is designed to support households and local businesses in sharing food they won’t use, therefore reducing their food waste – we call this redistribution. By sharing and redistributing we are stopping food going in the bin and causing pollution and contributing to climate change.

We are working towards a more circular food system, and the diagram below shows that a circular system has a better relationship with our planets resources. We can see that redistributing food is a key method in the feedback loops that are part of a sustainable food system.

Figure 2. Feedbacks Circular Food System Model. Read more here: https://feedbackglobal.org/building-better-food-system/

There are more feedback loops that we can build in our community: strengthening food sharing, community composting, growing more food locally, working with farmers to better utilise food produced locally and shortening supply chains and our reliance on carbon. What about using bread waste to make beer? Or food waste to breed insects for insect burgers? You can get really creative…what waste can you imagine becoming a resource? Circular economies and circular food systems are full of exciting opportunities, creativity and entrepreneurship!

How do you imagine a circular economy? What are your ideas? What could be up and coming in Aberystwyth?

Sharing and redistributing food and resources is the future, and we can see that glowing through the ECO Hub.

1.     The human right to food REALLY matters !

Everyone deserves equal access to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food. Food waste is a fluctuating supply, some days there are enormous quantities of broccoli, and other days there is no vegetables at all, but everyday there is a HUGE amount of cake. What I am saying is - food waste does not provide a reliable balanced diet. Food surplus is a supply that relies on volunteers, it is unpredictable, and whatever is being wasted does not provide the people who will use it with choice. Therefore, as a food supply, food surplus does not meet the human right to nutritious, healthy or culturally appropriate food.

Instead, we see food waste as a tool for bringing people together over a community meal and shared conversation.

When we first started Aber Food Surplus 4 years ago we worked solely with charities. Since then, we have changed what we do. We explored how many people in the UK are facing food poverty and it is millions and millions of people. We cannot let people rely on systemic waste if we are trying to reduce waste…

Feeding food waste to people is not going to tackle inequality and it will not reduce poverty. Food waste is emergency food relief, it is replicating a food bank. Desperately running around after food waste to feed people in poverty is rubbish and it is unsustainable. It highlights our broken food system, and a broken society.

It shows we can enjoy food waste as a tool to bring us together and enjoy a warm meal, but as a community we need to tackle inequality.

So what happens next?

There are many different things we can use surplus food for, it won’t feed everyone who ‘needs’ it, but food surplus is an affordable environmental choice to compliment the other costs of a more sustainable diet.

We can use surplus food to learn new skills like cooking. We can learn new dishes and try new flavours. We can try new foods that we wouldn’t usually buy. We can use surplus food for a conversation with our neighbour. We can use surplus food to bring the community together to talk about our food system, nature, and inequality, and to learn more about respecting each other and the planet we rely on.

Surplus food can complement a more ambitious approach for change within our food system, it is food for us to all share while we work towards solutions.

Food is the biggest part of our everyday lives that connects us to nature! Everyone deserves access to healthy food produced in balance with nature. Re-localising food is a necessary contribution to a more circular food system, food security and a healthy food culture. 

Ultimately, we need to grow more food where it’s eaten. Maybe we should grow more healthy and nutritious food alongside sharing surplus food?

Please get in touch with feedback on this article, and please share your ideas of what should happen next!

Please also order a surplus selection box here, check out what is being wasted, get creative in the kitchen, and tell your friends, family and neighbours about how you are playing your part in supporting our natural environments through our food system!