London mayor Boris Johnson opened a new FareShare depot in Park Royal last month.
The move builds on foodservice supplier Brakes’ partnership with FareShare, so that surplus food is distributed across 600 UK charities and organisations around the UK each month.
The site, next to one of Brakes’ existing London depots, distributes the equivalent of 800,000 meals to charities each year.
It was made possible thanks to a £362,000 grant from the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB). It will focus on rescuing surplus and still perfectly edible food from organisations within London and redistributing it to support some of city’s most disadvantaged people, helping to reduce the amount of food being sent to landfill. Organisations that will benefit from the depot include hostels for homeless people, breakfast clubs for children, youth centres, after-school clubs, luncheon clubs for elderly people, women’s refuges, night shelters, churches, day centres, drop in centres and drug rehabilitation projects.
Tackling food waste is a top priority for the Mayor and the LWARB, as the capital produces 1.4 million tonnes of food waste, a massive 40 per cent of which ends up dumped in costly landfill sites (which produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas).
Brakes leads the sector when it comes to minimising food waste in line with its corporate social environmental responsibility objectives- with just 0.2 per cent of fresh produce going to landfill per annum.
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