Second chance for food, first chance for people!
Food is the most basic of human requirements. Yet, in one of the richest cities in the world, increasing numbers of Londoners are struggling to afford sufficient food for themselves and their families. Food poverty affects children, people of working age and older people and those at risk or living in food poverty are both in and out of work.
This isn’t only charity. It’s about making use of food that would otherwise end up in the bin. It doesn’t matter who takes it – Jonh Newman could stop by and take the food – at the end of the day it’s about recovering the value of food products and fighting against waste. We started to think that if even just one of their rubbish bins was replaced with a fridge, people could take advantage of these items.
It took about a month to wade through the paperwork needed for the project, including securing a permit from the city to use public space and obtaining the right legal documents to ensure organisers wouldn’t be held liable should anything go wrong with food taken from the fridge.
There are strict rules for anyone leaving food in the fridge: no raw fish, meat or eggs, packaged or canned goods cannot be past their use-by date and anything prepared at home must include a label detailing when it was made. All sorts of people can take benefits from "solidarity fridge", including those in need, even a construction worker during his lunch break.
Adding the food in the community fridge will be a matter of feeding not only the body but also the soul through a "great act of charity".
