The Real Junk Food Project: York Sharehouse

Aim

We are bringing The Real Junk Food Project to York. With your support, we can open our next Kindness Sharehouse and feed even more bellies!

We're The Real Junk Food Project and we're coming to York!

The Real Junk Food Project is a collaborative effort to bring about a radical change in our food system. We save perfectly edible food that would otherwise not make it to your plate and make it available to all on a Pay As You Feel basis for money, time or skills. We feed human beings with absolutely no stigma attached. Since being established in 2013, diving in bins to save perfectly edible food, we have inspired projects all around the world and changed the conversation about not only the potential of food as a resource, but also of human kindness. We no longer need to bin dive, however our values are still the same. 

Food is the most incredible resource we must treasure, and we want to empower humans to use it in the best way possible! 

Pledge and help us open The Real Junk Food Project: York Sharehouse!

Our Kindness Sharehouse is the hub of all our activity. Here we bring in all our interceptions, quality control and process tonnes of food each month.

One year ago, we opened the Kindness Sharehouse in Wakefield, West Yorkshire to intercept food from all over the region and make it available to all, for Pay As You Feel. We were blown away by the public support, to raise over £3000 with 57 supporters in a fortnight.

2018                                       2019

We promised:

• Increased Freegan Boxes
• Educational work with schools from September 
• Increase the volume of food we intercept
• Supporting community partners
• Volunteering opportunities for businesses, local people and organisations
• Increase in outside catering events

It's been a BIG year. We delivered: 

• Freegan Boxes now provided for approx. over 100 families a week across West Yorkshire
• From September 2019, Kindness into Schools is launching with 20 school partners, providing 40kg of food each week. Each school will save approximately 1.56 tonnes of food in just one academic year.
• In April we surpassed 100 tonnes of food intercepted and redistributed! 
• Thousands of people through our doors
• Our work with various partners has gone from strength to strength, including churches, food banks and organisations working with refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants championing their activities in our community.
• Event catering redistributing over 1000kg of food, including a wedding for almost 300 guests! Building Zelig Catering Kitchen on-site at Sharehouse will also expand our activities.
• We now have a team of nine and almost 30 volunteers at the Sharehouse, with pathways to part-time and full time opportunities. 

Now we need your help to take our next big step in the fight against food waste....

What your support can do

We need your help to raise £5000 to secure our building and provide the infrastructure to replicate the Kindness Sharehouse model in York. Our achievements over the past year show our capability to succeed and grow. Those costs are related to site operation, staffing, and vehicle hire to deliver the core of the service.

The Sharehouse in Wakefield has gone from strength to strength in it's first year and we now have the model to be able to deliver the same in York. 

We know there are many amazing projects in York already doing great work in the fight against food waste and The Real Junk Food Project can support them as a central distribution centre.

Why is it needed?

Food waste is a global scandal that needs direct and urgent action. One third of all food is wasted globally. In the UK, 2015 WRAP figures show the average family threw away approx. £470 of edible food annually. The Real Junk Food Project Sharehouse provides an interception, storage and redistribution facility that can be replicated to connect up a network in your town, city and region. Many people and organisations are working hard to prevent food waste; we can provide the space, infrastructure and network to do this most effectively and efficiently. 

All food we intercept cannot be retailed for logistical, stock management or other reasons but is still fit for consumption is handled safely and professionally by our team. It is redistributed in various ways, including schools (which have limited catering budgets), community centres, cafes, individuals, Freegan boxes and event catering. The Real Junk Food Project provides the logistical solution and infrastructure to not only save food waste but make it available to all where it will be used best.

Mike Bonsall, who will be leading the project in York said, "Sustainability is my mission, and I like to see intelligent, flexible solutions to complicated problems in society. TRJFP provides an invaluable service in acting as a central hub for intercepted edible food, avoiding unnecessary waste. By acting as that central hub we can support existing projects working on this problem, and find more opportunities to do more at greater scale."

Spreading #kindness

Your support is absolutely vital to get this project off the ground and to bring kindness and The Real Junk Food Project to York, alongside the amazing network of sustainable food projects already running in the city such as Planet Food, Good Food York, yourcafe, Zero Waste York, Food Circle, Edible York and many many others! Any donation big or small will help us reach our goal. Please support us with a pledge and be a part of the next phase of our plans to REALLY feed the world!

"Let's REALLY feed the world"

This project successfully funded on 16th September 2019