There’s a line down the street outside a community food hub in Stirling, Scotland. Transition Stirling redirects food waste to feed people, including those experiencing the cost of living crisis.
The first thing I notice about Daphne Mcelwee is her beanie: it’s multi-coloured and fluffy. She’s a pensioner who’s been coming to the hub for the last three years.
Mcelwee’s come prepared today with her own shopping trolley. As I chat with her, she’s asking Amanda Monaghan, Project Manager of the hub, for elastic bands to keep her eggs fastened in their carton. Fastening the bands, one after the other she says, “I don’t have a lot of money, so I find it’s a good help.”
As well as eggs, Daphne’s trolley is filled with two oranges, bananas, two potatoes and a cottage pie that would have otherwise gone to waste.
Well, why is food waste an issue?
In the UK alone 9.5 million tonnes of food are thrown away annually. From that leftover pizza slice scraped into the bin to the unsold loaf of bread at the supermarket, it all ends up in landfill.
While food waste naturally decomposes (unlike plastic), it releases large amounts of methane gas that traps heat within the atmosphere.
Besides the environmental impact, there’s also the issue of food poverty. The Food Foundation tracker found that 15 per cent of UK households experienced food insecurity in January this year. That’s approximately eight million adults and three million children.
The food waste supermarkets produce may be part of the solution, says Monaghan. According to a report by The Grocer, supermarkets throw away 100,000 tonnes of edible food annually in the UK alone. It’s estimated that this could feed upwards of 30 million people a year.
Food waste as a solution
As Monaghan puts it, Transition Stirling “rescues” food due to expire from supermarkets and freezes it before its expiry date. This food can then be handed out to people, like Mcelwee, at the food hub.
Alternatively, it can be delivered to different shelters or community fridges to be eaten immediately. This concept isn’t new. From FareShare, the UK’s longest-running food redistribution charity that has been handing out food since the nineties, to the Felix Project that feeds school children in London, the organisations redistributing food waste is on the rise.
Monaghan is adamant that they are not a food bank, “A lot of people think we are because we’re giving away free food and that’s what food banks do.
“Food banks will give out food that maybe tends to have a long shelf date. We don’t do that. Ours all needs to be eaten pretty soon.”
Doors wide open
According to Monaghan, in the queue you’ll find all sorts of people. From parents with kids to people popping in before they go to work for a quick lunch, everybody is welcome.
“For us, it’s doors open to anybody,” Monaghan says.
“Whether you’re hungry, whether you’re not hungry and you pull up in a Rolls Royce. We don’t care, as long as you’re taking food and saving it from going in the bin.”
She says that they try to educate people that “although we’re giving you food for free it’s because this would have been in the bin.”
While supermarkets have moved towards initiatives to try and reduce food waste, Monaghan notes that food waste is here to stay. With that in mind, it ought to be used.
“There’ll always be some sort of food waste. However, there is so much stuff that there’s no need for it to go in the bin at all, and that’s what we’re trying to rescue.”
Food waste as a way to meet food need
To Monaghan it’s about focusing “on bridging that gap between food waste and food need”.
“We can definitely feed people with food waste. If you look at our figures for what we are saving every week, it’s phenomenal.”
“Every time we do presentations we always do it in elephants. Like this weekend we’ve saved 400 kilos of food and that would be 10 elephants. So yeah, to put it into perspective it’s actually horrifying.”
As Monaghan puts it, “We’ve got our part to play. I think we all need to come together. Rather than sitting waiting for corporations to take responsibility and do something, we need to start doing our bit now.”
Daphne, adjusting her beanie, says that it took her six months to pluck up the courage to come; she’s glad she did.
Monaghan notes: “If I didn’t work here, I would absolutely come and take food to help me out because I’m a single parent.”
“We all need a bit of help sometimes. And the fact that we’ve got all this food in the country that’s being binned that could be used to help people. It’s a way forward and it’s being recognised now.”
The Coronation Food Project, instigated by King Charles, saw a donation of £1million to different food waste charities and is a step in the right direction says Monaghan.
“King Charles is pushing it forward. His project is saying we’ve got these two things, food waste and food need. Why are we not putting them together?”
“That’s what we’ve always done here. But people just didn’t really get the message, but now they’re listening.”
Featured Image Credit: Transition Stirling
South African student journalist in my second year of doing my Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Journalism Studies.
Instagram: @x_.lin_x
