ReadingCAN blog: Stopping surplus food from become waste – Reading’s food rescuers

A lot of the focus of Food Waste Action Week is, rightly, upon reducing the amount of food we waste at home. After all this is where 70% (6.6 million tonnes) of food waste happens once it has left the farm gate.

But home is not the only place that food waste occurs. Food manufacturers, retailers and hospitality and food service providers, large and small, regularly find themselves with food that is perfectly edible but surplus to requirements.

In this post I focus on what happens to this surplus food. In particular the network of groups in Reading that are quietly rescuing surplus food to provide affordable meals for people who need them, the Smartphone Apps that are helping people find and share surplus produce – peer to peer and business to consumer – and the innovators that are challenging the whole idea of food waste.

Stopping surplus food from becoming waste: Reading’s food rescuers