Woohoo! August saw us intercept a staggering 4.3 tonnes of food and household products! One of our busiest months to date! This equates to just over 18 tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent emissions)* stopped from being released into our atmosphere! As Greater Manchester strives to become carbon neutral, our work to stop food from going to waste contributes to the overall efforts for a greener city-region.
We got our hands dirty with the North West Gleaning Network to save tonnes of savoy cabbages and purple cauliflowers going to waste from farms near Preston and Southport. The vegetables were redistributed to community organisations across Liverpool and Manchester including finding a home at our kitchen (and then into some hungry bellies!). Read more about it here!
Of the 4.3 tonnes of food and goods that we intercepted in August, we redistributed just under ¾ of a tonne of produce to the wonderful community organisations we support regularly. This includes Emmeline’s Pantry, who support women and families in crisis. Staff at Emmeline’s said ‘We are always amazed and pleased by the support we receive from Open Kitchen MCR! The very friendly Adrian who goes out of his way to help us unload a range of goods from baby items, cleaning products and high quality food. Over the holidays we have had lots of juice and water too which has been important for the children whilst off school’.
We are also pleased to have delivered fresh eggs, milk and yoghurt to Verve Place for their break club for the first time in August! Read more about their fantastic work here.
We joined in the shenanigans at Levy Market's Pride Disco and served up a mix of street food delights including soy chicken on homemade boa buns, Chef Matt's famous dal and a cookie dough 'Scotch egg'in a crunchy nut coating! It was a fantastic event and we were super happy to be a part of it.
No August bank holiday is complete without a BBQ, and we hosted not one, but two at Beer Nouveau for our Surplus Bank Holiday Bonanza! Surplus is our collaboration with Manchester independent brewery Beer Nouveau where we offer a range of delicious beers and street food made using ingredients that would otherwise go to waste.
Our next Surplus waste beer and street food evening is on Friday 13th September. We will also be making homemade pretzels and wursts for Beer Nouveau’s Oktoberfaust on the weekend of the 18th October! Not to be missed!!!
Our waste food catering service and our regular Surplus evenings subsidise our
work supporting a range of people in crisis with hot nutritious meals, cold food, snacks, drinks and toiletries, and also help us to stamp out food waste across Greater Manchester and lower our city’s carbon footprint. We’re grateful to all of our customers for their support in our mission to feed bellies not bins!
*Carbon emission calculation based on the Environment Agency's data and are always an approximation.